BLACK HOLES AND REVELATIONS

Ok, first off...what is with the song "Glorious"? It's not on my copy. Must only be on the Japanese version. Never heard it. Alright, I just listened to it on YouBoob. Not bad, better than half the songs on the album. If it was included I don't think I would change my rating.

The first song I heard from this album was the single "Starlight". The first few times I heard the song on the radio I didn't even recognize it as Muse! Not until I heard a DJ name the song and artist did I know who it was. About a year before, I had seen the video for "Stockholm Syndrome" and went out and got the band's first three albums. I was skeptical about picking this one up. Not until I seen the video for "Knights Of Cydonia" did I get it. It was a pretty underwhelming experience.

Black Holes was a letdown after the previous two albums. Both Origin Of Symmetry and Absolution were better and proggier than this is. This album begins and ends with the two proggiest songs here: "Take A Bow" and "Knights Of Cydonia", respectively. This may be Muse's most popular album due to "Knights" and "Assassin" being used in Guitar Hero games. "Assassin" is one of the better songs here; great guitar playing and drumming. This is about as close as this band gets to metal. There are some good lyrics on the album, especially "Exo-Politics". The songs "Soldier's Poem" and "Hoodoo" are almost filler here. Mellower than the rest, they ruin the flow of the album.

Most of the songs here are the typical anthemic rock you would expect from Muse. Only the song "Supermassive Black Hole" sounds like they are trying to do something new. It's sound like the band are trying to do a cover of a Prince song. "Take A Bow" has some nice sequencer on it. There is not as much piano here as on Absolution or the follow-up Resistance. I have to mention the sound and production here. It's really good. Unlike most recent music coming out these days, I can listen to this on headphones and not get a headache! Bravo! Many of today's recording engineers need to listen to an album like this; even today you can make music that sounds warm and rich, without having to compress and clip the hell out of it because "that's what everybody else is doing".

Muse are more popular now than ever before, but Absolution was their last great album. This deserves 2.5 but compared to the previous two albums, I have to knock it down to 2 stars.