This is less an album, and more like a mixtape filled with mini meditations of musical movements.
It's purely about the force and garishness of the ideas: they are just more bigger, brasher, bolder elements to add to the stew, just like the slithering dubstep bass synths on the title track or the skyscraper-sized lightshows in Muse's live performance.
No one goes to see a blockbuster for its profundity and deep characterisation. They go for the stunts and the special effects, both of which The 2nd Law delivers.
What Muse have done is re-establish themselves as a respected British institution by being fun.
The lack of Matt Bellamy’s histrionic warbles here seems to mute Muse, but it proves them to be a band with no fixed limits or methods, and The 2nd Law finds them mid-evolutionary leap.
The 2nd Law is a catch-22 release: It explores some daring new sounds, yet seems to base itself in radio-friendly tracks that mimic current trends. Progressive yet conservative, philosophical yet everyday, Muse’s dynamism is hard to deny.
Overall, The 2nd Law feels like an incoherent vortex of ideas, but at least they have the spaceballs to be totally ridiculous on a grand scale.
On their sixth album, The 2nd Law, they continue to shake things up, diving deeper into the electronic rabbit hole as they experiment with a sound that's less reliant on Matthew Bellamy's guitar heroics, resulting in an album that's a bit of a mixed bag.
The 2nd Law is preposterous, hearing it chanting of triumphs is pathetic. Muse never needed to enumerate them when the real triumphs were rolling in. Heard victories are sweet, but those unmentioned are classier.
The 2nd Law is a love-it-or-hate-it record. It contains some of the best songs Muse has done in recent memory, but also the worst.
The 13 tracks lack some focus and cohesion, weakening what should be a limitless, quasi-spiritual slice of rock and roll transcendence.
The problem is that it's not any fun at all, and the "message" feels like an unnecessary overcompensation for the campy streak that draws people into this kind of comic-book stuff in the first place.
What was a forgiveable indulgence on previous albums now just seems to highlight the absense of new ideas.
What the band has created on The 2nd Law is the musical equivalent of a massive-budget action film: men blowing shit up just because they can, a forced romantic subplot, and above all, the ego required to believe one band can save the world.
You were delusional if you thought for one moment that this album would be anything other than what it is: a bunch of friends making the music they've wanted to for a while.
Their genre-hopping, ostensibly the signifier of their artistic maturity, is in actuality the most concise description of their fatal flaw.
[Epic concert story based on The 2nd Law and its tracks]
Examining: Muse
Part 6 - The 2nd Law
So, I think now is the time to ask the question I’ve been hinting towards since this series’s beginning, the one that everyone comes back to whenever they’re discussing the trio of stadium rockers:
When did Muse become bad?
It’s a question that has been debated since 2001 and one music listeners will continue to debate long after the group inevitably disbands. Maybe you hated the pop tracks Muse started working into “Black ... read more
(Band Binge: Muse Part Six of Seven)
Here we are. The worst Muse album. By far. My GOD.
Hooooooly shit what happened here? After the pretty disappointing Resistance album, Muse fans were hoping, preying, PLEADING for a either a return of form or some sort of comeback towards a more tight and interesting sound, or a push towards the more expansive, grand and breathtaking moments from The Resistance (i.e Exogenisis). Either way, people didn't want...what ever the fuck this was.
The 2nd Law is ... read more
This surprised me. While this album has similarities with the last one, they improve upon every front with mostly satisfying results. I feel like overall this album is much more orchestral and explorative than it's more symphonic predecessor. The more electronic and synth inspired songs actually sound pretty good for the most part even if they are a little dated. The orchestral more ambient and mellow tracks are often a beautiful touch. And even some of the filler tracks and few symphonic ones ... read more
The 2nd law is muse at their experimental. Most of the songs on this album are brilliant but there are a few that way it down. The opening 3 songs are a great way to open the album as they show 3 different styles of the album before being picked up by the explosive survival as it roars to life. Animals and Follow me are also great before we hit the first roadblock of the album. Explorers, it feels like disney music and it feels so out of place even for this album.
The album picks back up with ... read more
It's weird, but I dig it.
There are some bangers ("Madness" / "Panic Station"), some underrated gems ("Explorers" / "Animals"), some odd ones that I'm on the fence about ("Follow Me" / "Unsustainable"), and some outright boring tracks ("Big Freeze" / "Save Me").
A mixed bag, but an entertaining one at that. I'd rather be caught off-guard by zany stuff than put to sleep by formulaic songwriting, so all in all I'm ... read more
1 | Supremacy 4:55 | 85 |
2 | Madness 4:39 | 76 |
3 | Panic Station 3:04 | 83 |
4 | Prelude 0:57 | 70 |
5 | Survival 4:17 | 80 |
6 | Follow Me 3:50 | 53 |
7 | Animals 4:22 | 87 |
8 | Explorers 5:46 | 74 |
9 | Big Freeze 4:39 | 66 |
10 | Save Me 5:08 | 57 |
11 | Liquid State 3:02 | 68 |
12 | The 2nd Law: Unsustainable 3:48 | 53 |
13 | The 2nd Law: Isolated System 4:59 | 64 |
#22 | / | Gigwise |
#46 | / | Rolling Stone |