Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on November 2009
Warner
The Resistance is Muse’s most ambitious album yet: extravagant, technically accomplished, epic rock providing a solid setting for Matt Bellamy’s swooping, mercurial falsetto. Crucially, there’s newfound warmth to the vocals, notably on “Undisclosed Desires” and the anthemic “Uprising.” At times, they overreach and fall flat on their face, and the concept of love’s struggles in a dark, futuristic world probably plays better to the fertile paranoia of adolescence than to the emotional equilibrium of a more mature demographic. But when they can create the Chopin-inspired headrush of “United States Of Eurasia (Collateral Damage)” and the brilliantly executed, three-part, 15-minute-long, apocalyptic “Exogenesis Symphony,” then you can just about forgive them their more indulgent and eccentric excesses. Prog-rock for the noughties generation: whoever said it would go away?
