The only real positive from the album stems from Muse’s willingness to co-opt new sounds into its arsenal. Once again, however, the U.K.-based three-piece band has delivered a record that is heavy on concept, but shallow in actual substance. are keen to drag us back into the ’80s, complete with retro-futuristic Tron graphics and drum machines. It’s been more than a year since “Dig Down,” the lead single, was dropped, so this is a project that has been long in the making. One thing’s for certain: Muse will continue to play around with genre and push the limits of their music well into the future – I just hope they do it better next time.After the 2015 release Drones fell flat with fans and critics alike, British prog-rock band Muse is back with Simulation Theory. It’s not the experimentation that disappointed, it was the execution – I had faith that Muse would be able to pull this type of album off a lot better than they did. Trust me, I’m not disappointed that the band’s sound is changing – I’m all for experimentation and trying new things! That’s part of what I believe makes the band so great – they’ve grown immensely since their founding and haven’t stagnated despite releasing their first album in 1999. The song itself isn’t all that bad, but it certainly doesn’t suit Muse as a band, even with their known history of experimenting.Īs someone who grew up on Muse, this album was a bit of a disappointment. Then, there’s ‘Something Human’, which sounds like it’d better fit a 20-year-old blonde pop star than a 40-year-old rocker like Bellamy.
Even the name “Thought Contagion” should be clue enough to the sort of campy speak of revolution that the song contains. ‘Thought Contagion’, which sounds like the sort of song that’d be played over the end credits of a mediocre YA dystopian movie, especially with some of the lyrics: “You’ve been bitten by a true believer”, and “They’ll never do what you want them to/Give it up and watch them break through”, among others. Songs where this hybridization falls flat include ‘Break it to Me’, which includes autotune of all things (which is enough to damn the song completely all on its own), and Bellamy described ‘Pressure’ as a “more straight Muse rock track” with “a different riff every ten seconds”, and it certainly doesn’t disappoint on this front. There’s an almost pitiful irony in this, however, particularly with the song ‘Pressure’, which is apparently meant to be about how frontman Matt Bellamy feels pressure from fans to keep making songs in the style of their older music. The sad part is that that’s what made me like these songs so much and what made them stand out from the rest of the album.
These two sounded like they could’ve been on some of the band’s earlier albums upon first listen. The more pleasant version of this combination occurs in songs like ‘Pressure’ and ‘The Dark Side’. Unlike its predecessors, however, Simulation Theory is a bit of a musical Frankenstein’s monster: around half the time, its hybridization of the heavy riffs the band is known for and their experimental electronic elements combine to make something vaguely enjoyable, but the rest of the time, the two are poorly combined. Their eighth album, Simulation Theory, continues this trend as they introduce more of the electronic elements they had been playing around with in their past few albums. Over the years, Muse has strayed further and further from their original sound with each new release. Simulation Theory Warner Brothers Records Īs someone who grew up on Muse, this album was a bit of a disappointment.