Whatever your opinions on the music itself, you can’t fault Muse for having a lack of ambition in recent years. From 2009’s three-part ‘Exogenesis Symphony’ to the EDM of 2012’s ‘Unsustainable’, it is quite telling that their idea of ‘stripped-back’ is a concept album with a ten-minute track. ‘Drones’, Muse’s seventh offering, deals with the typically abstract themes of abandonment, joining the military and humans being killed by remote control. With AC/DC – Back in Black producer Robert John “Mutt” Lange working with Muse on the album to help get in touch with their three-piece rock roots, can they still shoot to thrill or is it hell’s bells for Muse?
First single ‘Dead Inside’ begins the album, its simple synth, strings and guitar-based pop’s narrative of weakness merely hint at what is to come. The hard rocking ‘Psycho’ describes helplessness “love, it will get you nowhere” over a 6/8 riff recycled from a riff played at Muse shows since the late 90’s, the song itself likely to become a live favourite in future. The piano-led ‘Mercy’ is given some powerful production in the chorus for another album highlight. The Eddie Van Halen/Tom Morello-style soloing on ‘Reapers’ reminds us of the guitar-hero heights that Matt Bellamy was always capable of. ‘The Handler’ shows further compensation for the previous album’s lack of guitar riffs, before Muse go for a very effective combination of major rock acts beginning with ‘Q’ on the Josh Homme slide guitar-meets Freddie Mercury theatrics of ‘Defector’.
The last third of the album is unfortunately the weakest. The major key ‘Revolt’ shows just how much better Muse always were at darker music and ‘Aftermath’ has too close a resemblance to U2’s ‘One’ to fully enjoy. The stronger grand finale comes with ‘The Globalist’, described by the band as a sequel to ‘Origin of Symmetry’’s ‘Citizen Erased’. But where its prequel felt like seven minutes of Muse being Muse, ‘The Globalist’ is ten minutes of Muse directly quoting Ennio Morricone and Elgar with some hints of System of a Down and Elton John thrown in; a diverse piece of music by any standards with many commendable areas, but not quite the same standard as its predecessor. ‘Drones’ is the outro, a weird piece of Gregorian chant that ends the album with a plagal cadence ‘amen’.
Sometimes Drones feels like Muse are trying to make too many people happy, which sometimes causes the musical cohesion to suffer. But, in many different ways, this is quite a triumph for the band. It doesn’t manage to hit the level of classics such as ‘Absolution’, but if Muse lost you with ‘The Resistance’ or ‘The 2nd Law’, now might be the time to tune back in.
ALEC EVANS