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Muse have never been subtle. Even their early, proto-Radiohead albums screamed with a pulverising bombast that made Meatloaf look like Coldplay at their whiniest. Each successive album piled conspiracy upon government repression and space exploration, augmented by industrial synths from Doctor Who and guitar riffs that make even boring plebs like myself want to bounce up and down and tunelessly hum. So it is fitting that Muse cap off a European tour at the stadium they sold out 3 years previously, to a crowd at best rapturous, and at worst obsessive – anyone who has been trapped in a room with a Muse fan will understand this.
They played under a silver pyramidal, undeniably phallic, structure that looked like a mixture between a kitsch 70s sci-fi spaceship and Dr. Evil’s hideout in Austin Powers. If Freud was around today and met Muse, he wouldn’t have got going. He wouldn’t have known where to start. The setlist was mostly from their latest – and barmiest – album The Resistance. Dominic Howard (drums) and Chris Wolstenholme (bass) provided a steady chug-chug rhythm that never really went anywhere apart from one gloriously silly moment where they stood back to back on a platform that elevated them 50 feet and played some moderately stimulating drum and bass.
But they did ensure a platform for Matt Bellamy (vocals, guitar, keytar, and everything that wasn’t nailed down) to engage in some overblown rock. Despite wearing a sparkling LED costume that made him look like the offspring of Lady Gaga and a tube of glitter, he still managed to be a male sex symbol. During old favourite ‘Bliss,’ he laid into the vocals with an orgasmic falsetto so high all dogs around Greater London started howling. Ending songs with riffs from Jimmy Hendrix, Rage against the Machine and AC/DC, Muse played more than enough head-banging fodder, whilst also ensuring their piano-driven pieces set them apart from all the other rock bands out there. It was helped by the absolutely crazy pyramid. During ‘Guiding Light,’ a power ballad to end all power ballads, confetti shot out and covered the audience, and then during the ‘Exogenesis Part I: Overture’ (standard name for a Muse song really) a spaceship ponderously circled the stadium and then a person burst out in a shower of sparks and danced. It was ridiculous, pompously insane stuff, but by God it was fun.
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