Simulation Theory: An Analysis

Oh my god, they really did it again didn’t they?

I put off doing this Muse album for a while. Ever since Black Holes they have made 3 truly terrible, awful, no good, very bad albums. One of them is the creme of the crop of audio schlock (The 2nd Law), the other two soulless drudges through a nightmare land I cannot ever go through again(I won’t even name them). Listening to a new Muse album is a game of Russian Roulette, except if you win you get ecstasy shot into your bloodstream and if you lose you have to listen to Matthew Bellamy explain how Ready Player One really was that deep. After 2 months I decided to test my luck, and at first it seemed like I lost.

Good ol Matthew has caught another disease to add to his endless list of brain dysfunctions. The virus of the day: 80S NOSTALGIA! Matthew has seen fit to start the album with the opening theme to his new television show: Bizarrer Objects. In listening to this extended opening I realized something quickly, the mixing on this album is terrible. The compression is very noticable and it does nothing but muddle the sound on it rather than provide any character. The next two songs barely have anything worth talking about. The Dark Side is an upbeat and average rock song which goes in one ear and out the other and Pressure sounds like someone strangling Blue Orchid. While the instrumental palette is more varied than the slogfest of their last effort everything is so compacted in together that nothing really sticks out. As Matthew started to talk about the meaning of the ukulele girl monologue I thought I had taken a huge fat L. But then a musical savior came to grace me; Propaganda.

I was beaten over the head with that word, propaganda. Looped and bass boosted much like a Youtube Poop. Wobbly bass hits as silly as silly can be and it suddenly has the percussion and snappings of a Lorde song gone horribly horribly wrong. It appears Muse decided that working with big name producers was such a smash hit with The 2nd Law that they went and brought Timbaland to give an extra bit of spice. Timba even gets a co-writing credit on the song, the greatest honor if there ever was. I could trust no one else to make a song so inconceivable than the man who helped put together the huge smash single “Filthy” this same year: honestly they’re basically the same song. Combine all of that and add in the fact that Matthew Bellamy tries to make a Harry Potter joke and totally gets it wrong “You ate my soul just like a Death Eater", creates the perfect combination of clumsy sounding and just straight incorrect.

After this sudden burst of insanity I realized Muse had deceived me. They used the first 3 songs to subvert my expectations, to make me think this would be another nightmare fest but instead they gave me; The 2nd Law 2. I began to laugh, I laughed and laughed. I laughed even harder once a slide guitar came in and made Propaganda somehow more insane. Each song gave a new and completely different experience. Break it To Me hits with these EPIC RIFFS mixed with that stupid wobble bass to give way to a backing vocal melody which sounds like I’m listening to a somehow even more discount Maroon 5. Something Human is the unholy combination of Ed Sheeran and Train but with retro synths. Thought Contagion has the chorus of a really bad Fall Out Boy song with trap drums in the verses with Bellamy trying to pull the pitch shifted solo out again. Sorry Mr. Bellamy, it might’ve been cool before, but now you sound like a dad. Get Up and Fight has the same producer and co-writer as Run Away With Me so it is of course a perfect song. When I think Muse, I think Tove Lo vocal loops. Muse does go full Muse in that chorus though, which somehow manages to one-up Revolt as the most immediately gag-reflex chorus they’ve ever done.

Blockades is where I really lost it though. As my good friend Caden Patteen so eloquently put it “this sounds like every ripoff of their good songs combined into one”. It attempts to be so much and become the quintessential huge Muse rock song and it collapses under itself. I’ve already been hyper-aware of Dig Down since that song first dropped and it’s as huge as ever. While the greatest single of our time Madness can be heard throughout this album, it’s really on here where its initial blueprint is found. It is strikingly tasteless. It all concludes in the most fitting way imaginable, The Void. Not content to just show off the opening theme to his show, Matthew gives us the entirety of the closing credits of the season finale. As Matthew croons to himself “They’re wroooooooooooooooong, They’re wrooooooooooooooooooooong”, all I want to do is go to him, hug him, and let him know that he’s right, I’m the only one who understands, and I love him.

It’s also at this point where I’m hit with a strange realization. The other two members of Muse are nowhere to be found here. Even on their most dire of efforts both Chris Wolstenholme and Dominic Howard are incredibly talented musicians who are able to give some bit of flair to things. But with the hyper synthetic nature of the music here it’s almost as if they aren’t there. Matthew could honestly have killed both of them and had just done everything itself they have so little a sonic impact. It’s a huge knock against the fun factor of the album, but hey, The 2nd Law had to remain the king somehow.

I’ve spent well over 6 years of my life trying to comprehend every single musical idea, lyric, marketing tactic and thought which was involved with making The 2nd Law, and I didn’t think Muse would make an album that would be that baffling again. But god, they did it. While slower to get going, and lacking in a song truly as high-inducing as “Survival” or “Unsustainable”, there is so much to try to wrap my brain around that I think I’ll be working on this for a long time.
Thank you Matthew Bellamy, I’d thank the other Muse guys but their corpses are currently being used as props for Bizarrer Objects: Season 2.

And if you are upset at this review just know that I probably liked this album way more than you did.

10/10