Muse- The Resistance- Album Review

So after much anticipation with a long 3 years since Black holes and Revelations,  The Resistance was unleashed to planet Earth. Muse have managed to progress consistently throughout their careers, giving the world a formidable catalogue of music, from Showbiz to Black holes & Revelations, Muse have delighted both critics and the mainstream audience to become one of the greatest British bands of all time.

"The Resistance" is a mongrel of an album with a kaleidoscope of styles and sounds and although offering less coherence to their previous albums The Resistance is a solid and ambitious album with both extreme highs and some bitter lows. "Uprising" with its Dr. Who theme inspired synthesizer riff, solid fuzz bass and a disco drum beat seems to continue where "Supermassive Black Hole" left off. I say this in the way it's hard to constrain yourself from moving. However, We can't deny the fact that it's excessively cheesy, with the Blondie esque, "So come on!" yelped consistently you can't help consider that it's clearly a little tongue in cheek.

"Resistance" starts with a piano riff that sounds like a Euro Dance/Techno track from the 90s, however, on top of some sad synthesizer pads, it is a hypnotic listen. The RnB or Timbaland style of production on "Undisclosed Desires" is cringe worthy, as if the song is a mating call to all the Nelly Furtado fans making this song the weakest song of the album, however, on the plus side the pizzicato string arrangement is great as well as the kille Taking Heads bass tone. "United States of Eurasia" mixes Queen, Arabia, and Chopin together into a solid, pretty and epic song taking over the top to a whole new level in a very good way in both the subject matter of the lyric and the music.  While Matthew Bellamy treats our ears to some lovely Chopin in the outro providing a perfect wound down from the sonic assault of what just happened.

I like to thing "Guiding Light"is the "Invincible" of The Resistance and although I prefer the latter, this track is uplifting and very easy to listen to and like it or not it does sound a lot like U2, but less Bono... "Unnatural selection" has that unmistakable Muse Riff, which kind of sounds like the "New Born"riff (as if there ripping themselves off), however, the song lacks the intensity and vigor of "New Born". The song succeeds in having a very well crafted bridge like the bridge of "Filip", it slows down significantly and contains a great chord progression and guitar work.

As much anticipated as the album itself was the 3 part Symphony, "Exogenesis", which promised to make up the last 3 tracks of the album and i myself was looking very much looking forward to finally hearing it. "Exogenesis" is truly an amazing aural experience and Muse have captured what i can only call bliss. Bellamy shines through in all his glory as his falsetto gracefully soars through the orchestra with Dominic and Chris establishing their place inside the symphony with their rhythm section, maintaining the fact that this is Muse first and foremost being backed up by an orchestra and not the other way around. "Exogenesis" and especially part 1 you could say is the saviour of the album as it defines Muse's progression from their previous albums boldly and hints at what could be Muse's perfect album to come.

In no way is this album a bad one, it's highly ambitious and contains some very well written songs with superb arrangements, however, 1 or 2 of the songs on this album seem to bring this down and for Muse and their reputation it just a little bit of a bummer.

7.5/10