Alec Ferris
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Posts posted by Alec Ferris
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I'm still not convinced of the Wake Up/Reapers breakdown being "apocalyptic". Maybe I've been desensitised, but it just doesn't seem powerful enough on Reapers to warrant that description.
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I was going to say that Drones seems to have too much of a happy tone, but I think you guys might be over-analysing a bit.
Also Simon, your posts in here tend to have a rather hectoring tone. Yeah Bumpy was a bit bolshy above, but I see this stuff from you all the time.
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Bumpy was saying recently he'd like Matt to do something like the Fury Road soundtrack.
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And Matt will do a supergroup project as well with Josh Homme and Alex Turner. Album is out in 2017.
Because a supergroup project is different to a side project.
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Doesn't mean it's not a possibility. Particularly if Matt wants a dalliance with styles that he didn't want to have on this album.
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I just found that, while the sound might be present and correct, the substance isn't.
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I'm really confused as to what song we're talking about.
My overall argument was about the album itself, but the last couple of pages have veered between The Handler and Reapers after my stumble earlier.
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Reapers is like a Space Dementia for guitar. It's to say, a track where Matt goes nuts in playing one of his two main instruments, citing a lot of influences and attaching a mind-blowing outro.
Oh come on, it's nowhere near as weird or potent as Space Dementia, or Fury for that matter (just because two songs sound like they could be from the same album, doesn't mean they're on a par- witness the many, many latter-day Sepultura and Soulfly songs which sound like they could have been from Roots or Chaos AD). SD still sounds weird 14 years later, The Handler sounds like Muse deep in their comfort zone, running on autopilot. I'm not saying it doesn't sound at all like them.
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To be fair, loads of old Muse songs were heavily influenced by RATM. Hyper Music is pretty much the same riff as Snakecharmer, just with some slight variation
My point is more that you don't listen to it and just think they're doing a homage, any more than you hear Wake Up and think Rage are just doing a lazy Led Zep tribute. Both Wake Up and Hyper Music are potent enough on their own that the idea doesn't even spring to mind. Whereas The Handler doesn't seem to really earn that breakdown, it seems rather tacked-on to me.
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The Handler? Just sounds like early Muse to me.
To my ears, it doesn't have that vitality. Partly because of the slicker sound, but also the playing.
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I wouldn't say Reapers is them doing an RatM either though.
Well, I meant The Handler, and that was simply an example of Muse not incorporating influences as seamlessly as they have in the past. Aside from that, the riffs are mostly bog-standard hard rock.
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Ah right, thought you meant The Handler. Yeah I agree. Mind you, what about the outro to Micro Cuts, Dead Star, Agitated, etc.?
Those songs clearly bear Rage's influence, but there it's integrated into a sound which is entirely Muse's. You wouldn't say Micro Cuts or Dead Star are just them "doing an RatM".
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Blatant homage to RATM? It is?
Listen to Reapers, then listen to Freedom by RatM. You'll hear it.
Stop articulating what I want to say in a clear manner
Say it first, then
My brother and I have disagreed a lot over this album, so my arguments are very well-rehearsed. -
Because it strips things back to relative basics and is fairly tame for Muse, Drones doesn't have much to compensate for its lyrical weaknesses. Plus, there isn't really enough drama to carry the concept in my opinion.
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Well, there simply isn't the looser, more frenetic feel you get on Hyper Music or Stockholm Syndrome, for example. The Drones stuff feels very reined-in and is much less inventive in my opinion. It also lacks a lot of the grandeur which they've evoked on past albums, and too many songs ape either their influences (considering that they've integrated that of RatM, it's baffling to hear such a blatant homage on The Handler) or older songs.
By way of comparison, the new Foals track feels much less restrained and is therefore a lot more fun, as well as having better lyrics.
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Someone like Terry Date might be a good fit. He produced White Pony, after all.
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I'd say that we've ended up with what I was worried Lange's involvement might lead to. A rather by-numbers rock album without much of the flair I'm used to from Muse's rockier work. Not that I really put that down to his involvement.
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The "show me mercy from the powers that be" lyric still irks me on a proper-use-of-words level.
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In Showbiz and Origin Of Symmetry Muse were clearly playing avantgarde metal
Sometimes I can't decide whether a post is serious or joking on here.
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The issue's more that the substance of the album is different to their early work, rather than the sound.
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The ballads came off as totally redundant to my ears, because they're so damn familiar musically. I don't get any sense of Muse truly cutting loose anywhere on the album.
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The lyrics are fine to me except drones (the song) which is one of the most horrible things I've ever heard
also,
"your ass belongs to me"
Err, what about the "magic in your eyes"?
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It's kind of inevitable that a band who play together full-time for two decades will get better with their instruments. Songwriting is a different kettle of fish though and generally (not always) declines over time, usually once a band begins to run out of interesting ideas.
I still think Muse have some cards up their sleeve, but the repetition on Drones tells me that they (or Matt at least) are having trouble playing those cards. To name a few examples: the Psycho riff, the overlong solo in The Handler, the breakdown in The Globalist that could've been developed further, the album's title track which never really goes anywhere.
You could argue that their earlier, personable and introspective works are more mature than the vague political statements and half-assed platitudes of recent albums, but that's down to personal taste. Drones is a nice mixture of the two for me, and probably the most relatable since Absolution; but to say it exemplifies maturity is a pretty big stretch.
There is a subtle difference between complexity and complication. Muse's earlier works were complex; OoS is engaging and thought-provoking even though it appears to be nonsense. There is meaning behind the words and instrumentation that can provoke entirely different reactions when filtered through your own life experience.
TR was complicated. The songs were technically impressive to the detriment of meaning; clean to the point of being sterile. Drones doesn't have this problem, if anything it sometimes goes in the opposite direction, with the examples I mentioned above being too simple and lacking development.
OoS and Abso were a perfect mixture of form and substance for me, and I think they could find that stride again on the next album. The question is whether they'll have any ideas left by that point.
I agree with a lot of this. Drones is oddly mannered; on a surface it's like a slicker version of Absolution and BH&R's rockier fare, but without the invention and vitality of those songs. Now that Matt's ditched a lot of his allegories and committed to "serious" lyricism, his weaknesses are harder to put up with. There's no sense of humour or self-awareness as you get on, say, American Idiot or NIN's Year Zero, to name a couple of recentish, political concept albums.
My brother and I have disagreed a lot over this album, so my arguments are very well-rehearsed.
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Leni, those are so cool