Subtlety has never been a word one would associate with Muse, so it really shouldn’t have come as much of a surprise when the announcement of their new album The Wow! Signal came via a broadcast beamed directly from space. Thanks to a specially designed tablet carried 33km up into the atmosphere, they premiered the music video for first single Be With You and kicked off a 3 month countdown to the release of what has become one of their most highly anticipated records in years.
Never a band to shy away from fully exploring whatever musical rabbit holes they happen to fall down, Muse’s near 30 year career has seen them enthusiastically embrace a vast mash-up of genres. Their music has incorporated everything from heavy guitar rock, tender and elegiac ballads, experimental electronic dance anthems, and bombastic glam rock excess – and that’s barely scratching the surface. You never really know what to expect from this band, but you can always be sure it will be an unexpected experience at the very least.
The Wow! Signal is Muse’s tenth studio album, and the first since 2022’s acclaimed Will Of The People, which saw the band reject their label’s requests for a traditional Best Of compilation and instead put together a release that was essentially “a greatest hits album – of new songs.” Frontman Matt Bellamy purposely designed the record as a celebratory retrospective that encompassed the full breadth of Muse’s output and the signature soundscapes they had explored throughout their career.
Though a fine album, this patchwork of genres and styles did result in a bit of a disjointed experience, with no real cohesion across the record as a whole. This is an issue The Wow! Signal thankfully doesn’t suffer from. Though it once more finds the band looking to their own past for inspiration it is done with a far more delicate approach, taking the very best from their vast catalogue and using it to create something that sounds both blisteringly fresh yet reassuringly Muse.
From the very first moments of album opener Dark Forest the fingerprints of Knights of Cydonia and Resistance are immediately apparent. It is a loud, erratic, and gloriously dramatic way to kick off the album, filled with frantic percussion, a galloping rhythm and some heavy guitar work, not to mention the operatic Latin chanting and booming cinematic blasts of what sounds like the main theme form Laurence of Arabia!
Yeah, this is definitely a Muse album.
Echoes of their past triumphs pulse throughout the rest of this record. The achingly beautiful Shimmering Scars, a elegiac and typically grandiose meditation on the slow death of love, and soaring lead single Be With You – destined to become a signature festival anthem with its huge church organ and Bellamy’s ringing vocals humming throughout the intro before the pounding electronica, thudding drums and heavy guitars flare into life – recall the best of The 2nd Law.
Album standout (as much as any particular song can legitimately standout on a record as good as this one) Cryogen’s opening riff is this decade’s Plug In Baby (from my personal favourite of all Muse albums Origin of Symmetry). The track is another inevitable stadium anthem, a sci-fi tinged apocalyptic soundscape of obsession filled with the trademark Muse theatricality and bombast.
Each member of the band brings their absolute best to every aspect of this record. Bellamy’s vocals have never been more expressive and heartfelt, and his guitar work often borders on the virtuosic, while Dominic Howard’s drums roar through songs like a world ending earthquake. Special mention must also go to the phenomenal work of bassist Chris Wolstenholme, whose bass playing is the foundation upon which all else is possible – Nightshift Superstar is his crowning achievement on this record, a future dance floor banger filled with disco rhythms, orchestral flurries and choir vocals and driven by his urgent and dazzling bass line.
I think this is what makes this record so special, it truly feels like Muse getting back to the core of who they are as a band, a showcase for their incredible musicianship and the command they possess of their instruments.
There are so many more standout moments on this record that I could talk about in detail, but I fear I would be here all day, so I’ll be brief – Hexagons’ cascade of spiralling loops of guitar and dazzling electronica; the sheer avalanche of sound and chugging guitars that engulfs Unravelling; and the quiet restraint of album closer and Absolution throwback Space Debris – not to mention the surprisingly pop-tinged and immediately catchy, Ellie Goulding featuring, Hush. There is so much here to discover.
All that to simply say The Wow! Signal is an undisputed triumph. The whole record feels like a refinement of everything this band have been experimenting with for 3 decades. It fuses the disparate and more avant-garde aspects of their past work and layers them with experience to create a broad tapestry of sound that reflects their more modern sensibilities. The result is a record that is more vital and euphoric than anything they’ve done in over 10 years, a record filled with spectacle, exuberance and Muse’s trademark theatricality. It is also one of the most cohesive yet diverse albums they’ve ever put out – the album Muse have been driving towards their whole career, a perfectly balanced synthesis of every one of their disparate creative inclinations contained within an efficient but gloriously conceived album of 10 wonderful tracks.