Actually one of my favorite things about Muse and what really sets them apart from most other bands for me is just their attention to detail. Even in the early days they always had the sense to leave in a lot of the little noises and feedback bits and random stuff that would give the songs extra flavor and you would find on your like sixth listen. And even though they don't have a ton of that "live in the studio" sort of stuff anymore (although I can't help but think the count off to The Dark Side is a little nod to that), they're so meticulous about adding interesting easter eggs and a variety of layers to every song that it doesn't matter. That and Matt's innate ability to write engaging arrangements are possibly the two biggest factors that keep even Muse's most by the numbers material interesting for me.

Here's some! -The second guitar riff break in SS when Matt does a different pattern of distorted noises than the first one -the morse code in Dom's snare pattern on Starlight 😂 -the high pitched violin fall right at the start of Unsustainable -the outro chord progression on Mercy -the wree-eerw sound and the panning back and forth on the soloed guitar riff at the end of Micro Cuts just before the bass and drums come back in for the last time

They can take as long as they merry-well please on even thinking about making a new album if they're working on that!! Holy cheese, I can't believe I never imagined Muse doing a Wall-type film before, it makes so much sense for them! Very excited!

Late to the party. Immediately downloaded it from iTunes before I listened and was not disappointed. Matt can whisper "bad" uplifting lyrics sincerely to me all day if the music is this good! Seriously that piano riff is just so deliciously off kilter and the chords are so Musey, and the orchestra fits so perfectly! This is what I love about Matt's songs.

woah I was not expecting that! Yes, please let Matt score a film, that would be epic! And not some stereotypical romance, only the grandest and most outrageous with moments of sincerely touching heartache could be worth Matt's time. lol Love any time Matt does symphonic work, it always sounds great!

Very cool about the guitar bits though! Matt is my favorite guitarist of the century so far, so I'm always excited to hear what he has up his sleeve!

Darn, I was hoping a new album would drop earlier next year, but maybe winter 2021 is still in play. I'm sure the pandemic must have set at least a couple gears back.

I loved the Panic Station video the day I first saw it and I still love it now. I'm not sure there's any content Muse have released in the past decade that more perfectly embodies their hyper-imaginative brand of focused silliness. The making of videos are great. I'm not huge on gig releases, I stick mostly to studio stuff. If they're going by their usual pattern of two studio albums followed by a live album, it does seem about time for the next one though.

Big Freeze just gets more and more cringey as it goes on. Collapsing in stellar clouds of gas is actually a kind of cool image, but "stop the loneliest force from becoming king of the universe" sounds like what I must sound like to native speakers when I try to speak French, lol.

1. The new album was The 2nd Law, it had basically just come out the very month I was introduced to them. 2. The first one I listened to was The Resistance 3. The song that really got me hooked on them was Time Is Running Out, and Uprising to a lesser extent 4. The Resistance, Origin Of Symmetry, Drones, Black Holes And Revelations, Absolution, Simulation Theory, Showbiz, The 2nd Law

I'm optimistic that this whole pandemic is going to at least give Matt a new angle for his next song about the end of the world. He's done nukes, climate change, war, aliens, revelations, virtual reality, and of course drones. Certainly pandemic was on the to-do list already. Now he has no excuse!

To Muse fans, the list could go on quite a while. There are really very few Muse songs that don't have die hard fans, frankly I'm hard pressed to think of one I haven't seen lauded as a classic by someone on here. In my eyes....probably Falling Away With You. I feel like I see it get the short end of the stick a lot but it's a top 3 track from Absolution for me, no question. By the world at large? Anything not named Madness, Uprising, Starlight, Supermassive Black Hole, Knights Of Cydonia, Time Is Running Out, Hysteria, or Plug In Baby. Muse is in such a weird but kind of ideal spot with commercial success. They can sell out arenas, have a massive global fanbase that will always buy their new albums, and they've had multiple charting hits and at least one Billboard number 1 record. That said, most people I meet aren't really aware they have more than one or two songs (though which songs those are depends on who I'm talking to). Muse isn't really a household name, despite having earned plenty of commercial success and always putting on some of the most spectacular live shows in the world. To me that comes down to two things: lack of consistent critical favor, and lack of a followup smash hit after Madness. By the former, Muse doesn't get that extra push from critics which helps less commercially successful bands maintain a high reputation, and can help to bring in new fans (for example, Fantano is notoriously unimpressed with Muse in general, though he does like TR). By the latter, Muse didn't cement their place in the singles charts by capitalizing on the success of Madness, which I believe is still their highest charting single. So to many casual listeners, they might appear like a flash in the pan or one-hit wonder, despite the reality being very different. They had a steady build-up over many years to that commercial breakthrough, but didn't stay on the charts. To me this is a near perfect recipe for Muse to be just plain underrated as a band. Okay maybe in 10-20 years people will look back on T2L and ST and think it's all a bit too silly, but they hopefully also look back on that run from Showbiz through BH&R or TR and think "wow, there's a band that really stands out after all this time and still sounds relevant!" Drones could go either way I suppose. I love it, but I know it gets a lot of criticism for being kind of heavy handed and half baked.

Reapers Revolt Madness boy that's tough

I'd really rather early 2021 than late. I'm graduating next spring and new Muse before I get out of college would be a fantastic way to go out, lol. But also waiting till the end of 2021 feels like forever away. I will say though, ST still feels very new to me. It's not the kind of record you go back and pick out loads of details you didn't hear the first few times, but it is the kind with plenty of songs I'd be happy to put on repeat. The alternate reality version also holds a lot of water and keeps the material interesting....now if they can just combine the successes of the two discs into one on the next record... Actually now that I think about it, it reminds me of what the Foo Fighter's were doing in the late 00's. In Your Honor was half electric, half acoustic in a gamble to fully explore both sides of the band's sound. It had different songs on either disc but the idea was kind of similar to what Muse did with ST. Release two albums at once which ideally take the band in two different directions. The Foos followed that up with Echoes, Silence, Patience, and Grace, which I haven't listened to but I'm aware was an effort to then combine the acoustic and electric sides into a more dynamic whole. So that would be a nice idea for the next record maybe. Take the spaceyness and often stripped down quality of the second disc and combine it with the studio sheen and pop concision of the first for a more dynamic whole that meets somewhere in the middle. Not like it would be a new idea for Muse to combine disparate styles, lol.

If this was supposed to fool me it definitely hasn't done that.