Rolling Stone: 50 Best Albums of 2015 & 2012

[muse samuse]

39 | Muse, 'Drones'

 

"The seventh album from U.K. prog-rock vets Muse is a mirror for these times, a searing commentary on our era's vague dread, computer-driven death from above and Orwellian political climate. Muse take us into a warzone where the death happens over there and the casualties are lost values over here. They drive home their doom gospel with a precision-strike muscularity that makes for the most straight-ahead music they've delivered in years, pairing the ornamental excess of their equally high-concept 2012 album The 2nd Law down to pure lunging force. Legendary AC/DC and Def Leppard producer Robert "Mutt" Lange helps focus the band's power-trio impact, giving Seventies and Eighties arena heroism a mordant cast that can suggest a real-time image of today's collapsed idealism. "I am crushed and pulverized/Because you need control," singer-guitarist Matt Bellamy wails in the stark opening electro-funk of "Dead Inside," like Bono calling out from inside an episode of Mr. Robot. It was the year's most convincing howl from the abyss."

 

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/lists/50-best-albums-of-2015-20151201/muse-drones-20151130

 

46 | Muse, 'The 2nd Law'

 

"In an era of diminished expectations, Muse make stadium-crushing songs that mix the legacies of Queen, King Crimson, Led Zeppelin and Radiohead while making almost every other current band seem tiny. The proudly pretentious British trio add bits of Skrillex-style dubstep to their sixth album, on which Matthew Bellamy howls about a modern-day dystopia of unsustainable societal growth and difficult girlfriends. And on "Madness" and the London Olympics theme, "Survival," Muse even manage to compact the epic into a tight pop form."

 

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/lists/50-best-albums-of-2012-20121205/muse-the-2nd-law-19691231