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It's entirely selfishly motivated :p I think it's because my gut reaction is the (almost certainly mistaken) belief that Muse get validation for the kind of shit they're putting out atm because of those people saying 'this is great!'. And if they went away, and the only people left were people going "no this is shit, you used to be able to write better stuff than this, this is so simplistic and shallow", then Muse would be forced to have a long hard think about their music, and then it would improve. (And then I'd be happier with the band, etc.)

 

Even then though, not to be the opinion white knight but there’s no wrong or right direction to validate them towards (if that were even the case), people just like what they like. I know I rate Drones and Abso around the same level tbh. Like you said as well, pandering to more old school fans =/= good results anyway. No point wasting actual emotional energy on caring what other people like/dislike, otherwise you’re always gonna be pissed off and it’ll distract you from just enjoying the things you like.

Edited by Jobby
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The post-BH&R albums have appealed to a different kind of audience or taste than the pre BH&R albums in general. T2L will probably go down as their worst album (thus far) by fans on both sides of the fence, but I've met more people outside of this board who prefer TR or Drones to Abso or OoS than vice versa. There's something to be said about a significant dip in general song-for-song quality...but I honestly think they may have gotten better at album-craft over the years.

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According to my sources we are getting a double album with the first CD being all the 2nd Law Part Two shit and the second disc being nothing but filthy raw pwoper heavy prog rock.

 

Some guy who knows the dog of the guy who is friends with the guy who helped carry an amp into the studio where Muse recently recorded told me when he was drunk.

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If Drones had better lyrics, I would absolutely put it on par with Abso.

If Drones has better lyrics I would like/love Reapers, The Handler, Drones, Dead Inside and...yeah that’s probably it. Mercy and Aftermath are at a level of shit that Muse didn’t come close to on Abso, despite songs like TOADA and TSP. Defector is pretty much on that level though, while The Globalist is their most unoriginal track to date.

 

Oh and Paycho would still be way too long.

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Flow: Drones

Production: Absolution

Mixing/mastering: Drones

Lyrics: Absolution

 

Song-wise, Drones doesn’t hit the level of Stockholm, Butterflies, Apocalypse, RBS or Endlessly but it’s more consistently solid/enjoyable imo. It only really falls apart for the last two tracks and has a wee wobble with Mercy. Abso’s wobbles are frequent, just more in terms of mood/tone than quality. Individually, S4A, FAWY and Blackout are decent songs but, in the context of the album, they bring the momentum to a sudden dead stop and jerk you in another direction so I can’t enjoy them. Then you’ve obvs got a few meh tracks filling out the rest of the album like TOADA, TSP and TIRO.

 

If Abso flowed, like at all, and the band had made better choices w/ what did and didn’t make the cut, it’d probs wipe the floor with Drones.

 

Edit: it’d still probs be a way off BH&R and OOS for me though

Edited by Jobby
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As if off-topic matters here any more when there's like one post a day :LOL:.

 

Wonder if (hope) it’ll kick back up when release build-up kicks in :(

 

Please take the Drones vs Abso debate somewhere else as it’s completely irrelevant in this thread.

 

You’re right. Discussing the last album will only clog up the wealth of quality discourse on new information about LP8, like this:

 

According to my sources we are getting a double album with the first CD being all the 2nd Law Part Two shit and the second disc being nothing but filthy raw pwoper heavy prog rock.

 

Some guy who knows the dog of the guy who is friends with the guy who helped carry an amp into the studio where Muse recently recorded told me when he was drunk.

Edited by Jobby
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Abso's mixing/mastering kills it. I find the idea of putting softer tracks between all of the more upbeat tracks pretty novel and a good way to draw attention to each individual song, but I agree it could've been executed better so that the album would flow more naturally.

 

Drones' biggest issue is lyrics, which aren't incredibly important to me in the first place, so I take Drones over Abso.

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Please take the Drones vs Abso debate somewhere else as it’s completely irrelevant in this thread.

 

You applying to be a mod?

 

Let's make an album comparison thread so we can break up the conversation even further...

At this point the board might as well be broken down into 2 threads: "Muse stuff" and "other stuff" for all the activity it gets. Breaking up a conversation into different threads is just ludicrous at this point.

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At this point the board might as well be broken down into 2 threads: "Muse stuff" and "other stuff" for all the activity it gets. Breaking up a conversation into different threads is just ludicrous at this point.

 

Subdivide "Muse Stuff" into "Muse love" and "Muse hate". I think then we're all set. The band themselves can then even peek in again every now and then to get some love.

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I'd argue the decision not to mix up the 'heavier' and 'lighter' songs on Drones is to the album's own detriment, and that Abso doesn't suffer from a pacing issue half as much. I know The Globalist has a bit of a heavy section, and that the feel of the songs is fit to correspond to the half-baked 'narrative' Matt came up with, but compared with the first half of the album, the second feels like a real soggy slog, as you wade through Revolt's verses (momentum starting to drop) and Aftermath (momentum completely gone) and about 3/4 of TG, before Drones sends you to sleep.

 

It's made worse by the issue that Muse are now pretty shite at writing anything that has a remotely positive theme/isn't in Drop D tuning, so not only is the difference in mood and pace starkly drawn out between half 1 and half 2, the quality of the songs falls off a cliff too.

OOS did it best obvs, the album feels nicely paced (although I do think 2nd half is less good than 1st)

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Feeling Good aside, I think both halves of OOS are equally amazing. The 2nd half is arguably where it gets more experimental, but that pays off when you’re getting songs like Screenager so I’d say they are both very evenly balanced. The uninitiated might find ones like Micro Cuts hard to listen to, but for me the 2nd half is just as awesome as the first.

 

Not to mention Megalomania :facemelt:

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