New Release: Muse - Absolution

[method77]

Some compare this group to Radiohead and some even say they copy them but this album will prove them wrong. After hearing this album I admit it... This group is one of the best rock bands in the world.

I think this is the first album that is released on the other side of the Atlantic so...

Ladies and Gentleman...Meet the MUSE

1. Intro

2. Apocalypse Please

3. Time Is Running Out

4. Sing For Absolution

5. Stockholm Syndrome

6. Falling Away With You

7. Interlude

8. Hysteria

9. Blackout

10. Butterflies & Hurricanes

11. Tsp

12. Endlessly

13. Thoughts Of A Dying Atheist

14. Ruled By Secrecy

[Potato]

Absolution is fabulous. I really don't like the Radiohead comparison.... I've been listening to Muse for four or so years now and I still don't hear it. Showbiz still rocks my world though.

[DudeAsInCool]

Here's another thumbs up review from Zboneman.com which gives a little history of the band:

Absolution Music Review:

For those of you who know all about this band (you Europeans), the following is going to be a dull exercise in biography. Muse washed onto American soil in 1999 with their first album, Showbiz an album that was clearly inspired by Radiohead, and in terms of it’s quality and maturity would rank somewhere between Pablo Honey and The Bends. But considering that the average age of the English lads was a ripe old 19, members Matt Bellamy, Chris Wolstenholme, Dominic Howard showed more than promise. And not unlike much like Radiohead’s earlier work there was inconsistency and filler but there were also rare gems.

"Unintended" for example a tender-sounding, yet literately ironic, love ballad that smacked as much of Oasis’ better stuff as Thommy boy, was a masterpiece and a song that you could put up against the best of anyone’s work. I still find it hard to believe that a 19 year old wrote that song. I think if I were a condemned man on death row and along with my last meal I got to hear one last song, "Unintended" might just be that swan song.

Next came Origin of Symmetry, an album that, quite inexplicably has yet to see a U.S. release, and the critics went nuts over it. Many proclaiming it the best album of 2001. An album much like The Bends for Radiohead, that found the band solidly planted on their feet dishing out swirling doses of big masterful Progressive (think Queen not Yes) melodic nectar. I don’t pretend to understand why some of the best stuff from the U.K. never makes it over here, where we’ve always appreciated as much or more than them. Look at James’ Millionaires never made it over here – what’s up with that?

With Absolution, Muse has once again delivered a masterpiece, painted on an even grander scale, (think The Bends to O.K. Computer) Not as rocking and metallic, but even more rich, and breath-taking in it’s scope and execution. Bellamy’s piano and keyboard work on this record is all at once, aggressive, atmospheric, theatrical and technically out of this world and if you listen to it loud enough, swoon-producing. Chris Martin of Coldplay has been quoted many times as saying that just when he thinks he’s becoming something of a decent piano player he’ll go over to Bellamy’s and leave completely humbled. If you liked the hey-day of Queen "Bohemian Rhapsody," for example and pre-Kid A Radiohead you need to get on line and purchase this one immediately, it was released about 5 months ago and there’s no sign of a U.S. release on this baby either.

Though all of the critics in our stable have heard the album and would have placed it in their Top 3 for 2003, we play by our own self-imposed U.S. release rules, so if you were wondering if we were just a bunch of narrow-minded dunces now you know. Write your congressman, do some damn thing, because these guys are as good as Radiohead and so far they haven’t felt the need to experiment with mediocrity.

http://www.zboneman.com/music/620.html