THE 2ND LAW

I'm pleasantly surprised about how much I like this album. I heard people saying how awful it was, and I heard Unsustainable, which, believe me, is the low point on the album. Overall, the album is definitely more simplistic and electronic-based than their old stuff, but thankfully it's not all faux-dubstep like Unsustainable. The album is actually pretty eclectic musically, even though there are noticeably quite a few ballads, but, thanks to impactful lyrics like the ones in Explorers, this isn't too much of a problem. For example, there are Queen-esque dramatic tracks like Survival, a smooth electronic jam (Madness), a funk-electronic hybrid dance song (Panic Station), even an old-school Muse track with some harpsichord-sounding keys (Animals), some U2-like rock (Big Freeze), a very non-Muse sounding grunge song (Liquid State).

Overall, the album has grown on me immensely, but even though the last two tracks, Unsustainable and Isolated System, are brave attempts at originality with a noble message, they are awful. The album as a whole, however, is not, and I'd even say it's rather good.

Rating: 7/10