Muse - Absolution
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CD Details
Artist: MuseBrand: MUSE
Edition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 2004-03-23
Music Label: Warner Bros / Wea
Soundtracks:
- Intro
- Apocalypse Please
- Time Is Running Out
- Sing For Absolution
- Stockholm Syndrome
- Falling Away With You
- Interlude
- Hysteria
- Blackout
- Butterflies & Hurricanes
- The Small Print
- Endlessly
- Thougts Of A Dying Atheist
- Ruled By Secrecy
Music reviews of Absolution
Music Review: The Soundtrack to the Apocalypse
Rating: 5 Stars
What an album. This is Muse at their nihilistic best. Writing this shortly before the July 3rd release of their new album "Black Holes and Revelations", I can't help feeling a sense of slight trepidation: will the new, apparently more "poppy" Muse stay true to their roots? That's what inspired me to set down my thoughts on Absolution.
1. Intro
This 22 second instrumental sets the theme perfectly. The pounding, seemingly "approaching" the listener, recalls something primal, something monolithic. We are prepared for darkness- and darkness we will get.
2. Apocalypse Please
A beautiful piece of operatic rock. Droning vocals mix with a classical driving piano line to create a gloriously significant song. Once again, Bellamy prepares us for "something biblical", an event of such profound importance that we can't help being afraid.
3. Time Is Running Out
A seminal work and a fan favourite. An intensely catchy bass-and-click line is followed by an increasingly urgent Muse classic. In keeping with the theme of apocalypse, "time is running out" is powerful and menacing. The song peaks several times, not least with the harrowing line "how did it come this?"
4. Sing for Absolution
This initially subdued song turns into a frenzied masterpiece. This is the most apocalyptic song on the album. One reviewer (who will always remain immortal in my mind) described it as "the sound of church bells crying and a thousand ambulances falling from the sky". Exactly. This song is about praying before the imminent end. It's not urgent, it's beatifully mournful and each note is laced with regret.
5. Stockholm Syndrome
Frenzied, brilliant. This is Muse at their most operatic. The chorus reaches new heights and the harmonisation is magnificent. The oddly dreamy keyboard effect really captures the idea of falling in love with someone who does you harm (as we see in the US video, in which a cheesy whiter-than-white TV show audience is corrupted by the powerful but evil sounds of the song). This song is at once depressing and immensely uplifting. Top notch.
6. Falling Away
It's back to the end of the world for this initially quiet song that grinds its way to a beatiful, emotional climax. Lovely. The video-gameesque themes add lots to the song, the intensity of which, as the title suggests, falls away. This song captures the sadness of destruction and disorder.
7. Interlude
Just that, really. A well-worked, tuneful, 37 piece. Nicely distorted guitar work and harmonisation to boot.
8. Hysteria
A crunching, brilliant, monster of a song. Menacing guitar lines precede more falsetto followed by some of Bellamy's strongest vocals on the album. A change of pace and the song is back on track. Lovely. Understandably, another fan favourite. This was received with rapturous applause when they used it to open at Glastonbury in '04.
9. Blackout
A genuinely quiet song for once! Maybe a good idea after the deafening brilliance of Hysteria. Meaningful and morose, with great harmonies kicking in after about 1:24. The violins rise and fall with Bellamy's voice. A great interval of a track, and one that suggests that (unlike most metal bands), Muse don't mind showing a sensitive side.
10. Butterflies & Hurricanes
More Operock! Heavy on the harmonies from the start, this song is immensely uplifting with an invigorating driving piano line and an urgent message ("you've got to change the world"). This song is intense and, save the minute or so that serves as the "calm before the storm" nearish the end, scarsely relents. Finished off by a wonderful rachmaninoffesque/wagnerian piano solo building into a final cathartic climax. My favourite song on the album. The frenetic and urgent final minute is supreme.
11. The Small Print
This song is about Faust (an early Christian German legend about a man who sells his soul to the Devil, adapted and immortalised by Goethe into a troubled man who sells all for success). Hence "I'm the priest God never paid" and more lines about possession, loss etc. The song is devilishly clever, and the guitar lines are suitably menacing. More classic metal than many of the others in this album, but it's a refreshing and unique song. Very nice. Just remember: always read The Small Print- Muse exhort the listener to take the advantage of one poor Teuton who didn't.
12.Endlessly
Beatiful, warm, synth lines curve over this song with a strongly artificial operatic falsetto creeping in at opportune moments. A profound, lonely song. More perfectly crafted angst from a band that obviously have a lot on their collective minds. Relatively short compared to a lot of the songs on the album. It's deceptively simple, intense stuff.
13.Thoughts of a Dying Atheist.
Ay, there's the rub. What happens when we shuffle off this mortal coil? Hamlet's dilemma. To sleep, perchance to dream. "Thoughts" expresses the same fear of venturing into the unknown. The line "It scares the Hell out of me" captures perfectly this fear. If you renounce God all his life, what happens if you come face to face with him? Do you "look through a faithless eye"? (great line...)
14.Ruled By Secrecy
Once again, Muse prove that they make rock for clever people. The title of the song is adapted from that of Jim Marrs' "Rule By Secrecy"- the mother of all conspiracy theories, a book that contains ideas ranging from the Freemasons to psycho-electric mind control. Thus the enigmatic, complex beginning. The song rises to a beautiful classical piano solo by the ever-impressive and multi-talented Bellamy. The album ends with a suitably obscure but awesomely emotional piece.
Description of Absolution
Aussie limited edition of 2003 album features 14 tracks & includes a bonus DVD (PAL) featuring a 40 minute documentary on the making of the album, band outtakes, & a studio photo gallery. Festival.One can't listen to Muse without hearing Bends-era Radiohead, so it's necessary to start there. But for all the familiar grandeur and gloom, Muse's other catharsis-rock influences, like Queen, Slade, and even Black Sabbath, provide the band with a dazzling, heart-on-their-sleeves theatricality. Always threatening to layer on another falsetto from singer Matt Bellamy, or conjure more guitar crunch from the ether, Absolution is downright Baroque in parts, like a Rufus Wainwright-penned rock opera fantasy. Yes, the record is completely unoriginal. But when these guys let it rip, there's no doubt they have the fever. "Stockholm Syndrome," for one, could only be produced by True Believers with a lust for power chord drama, full of angst, envy, and the bitter end of it all. If you wish a certain Thom Yorke-led outfit from Oxford had made another record or two before evolving into minor-key art rockers, Muse carry the torch for another few miles, gloriously and tragically unaware that they're running in circles. --Matthew Cooke
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