Essential Listening: Muse - Origin Of Symmetry

Total Guitar
July 2001 - Issue No #85

Not necessarily the best albums of the month but the one's that'll be the most talked about.
Hear them or be a social leper...

Who are they?
Feisty Devon rock trio with up-and-coming player Matt Bellamy on guitar duties. Not the new Radiohead, in case you were wondering. 

Any good?
Grandiose and at times overblown - whilst also being much heavier than their debut - Muse's second album is a loud and proud beast, self assured and making one huge statement. If any of their contemporaries had tried to pull off something like this, it wouldn't have worked. But Muse have never just been any other band and they've definitely tried to create a rock epic on Space Dementia, there's even shades of Queen. Origin firmly sets the band apart from their indie rock fraternity, and marks out Muse as a band of considerable ambition. 

Must hear
Recent singles New Born and Plug In Baby are monster guitar tracks, and check out Citizen Arranged - another stand-out rock track, where Matt comes closest to emulating his hero, Tom Morello.

Why buy? 
Bellamy is the most inventive guitarist TG has come across in quite some time. And this album is dripping in seriously impressive guitar.

Rating 4/5

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

(MUSE) Matt Bellamy: the ONLY guitar interview!

Image
Total Guitar December 2003 (Issue 117)  As anthemic as it is experimental, Absolution is Muse's greatest achievement yet. Matt Bellamy tells us about taking chords apart, getting the ultimate tone, and the making of a masterpiece.   It starts with the sound of massed armies approaching, and ends with a single dying power chord. It's called " Apocalypse Please " and it's the opening track on Muse's extraordinary new album, Absolution . From here on in it's a non-stop lunatic ride through some of the grandest, most unashamedly epic guitar music ever created, taking in mournful death marches ( Blackout ), sound-and-fury riffing ( Stockholm Syndrome ), as well as thunderous end of the world anthems ( Time Is Running Out ).   In the months leading up to the album's release, Matt Bellamy told the press that the coming Muse record would be more 'uplifting' than previous efforts. We needn't have worried. From it's portentous opening bars to its...
Read more

Muse summer single announced

Image
NME 6th April 2002 Single and DVD set for June Release  “We've got a new single coming which is really fucking heavy rock" — Matt Bellamy  Muse release a brand new double A-side single this summer, and also hope to finish their third album this year, NME can reveal.  Speaking exclusively to NME , singer Matt Bellamy said that the group had started recording demos for the follow-up to their 'Origins Of Symmetry' album, and will release double A-side single, 'Dead Star'/'In Your World' on June 3. Both tracks are taken from a new DVD, Hullabaloo , which follows on June 17.   Hullabaloo is a double DVD release, with one disc featuring 18 live songs from their 2001 tour, recorded over two nights at the Paris Zenith, and the second containing documentary footage from a number of dates across the world.   Bellamy said, "We did a concert in Paris which we recorded for a DVD. One ( disc ) is the concert and the other is loads of us getting up to weird ant...
Read more

(MUSE) Muse Update

Image
Yorkshire Evening Post Friday 2nd March 2001 By Jon Rhodes  After you have lived through the most incendiary 24 hours in rock's recent history and then had a white hot year yourselves you would think it was probably time to chill. But fans of Muse will not be disappointed as their heroes crank up the temperature and tempo with their first release of 2001. And if the new single Plug in Baby is any indication of what is to come then someone better call the fire brigade because this three-piece are cooking on gas. As guitarist and lead singer Matt Bellamy explained that the band wanted to push on from the success of debut album Showbiz , but stay true to their loud and lewd beliefs. He said: "We've just finished recording the new album, which should be out in the not too distant future."   "We are very pleased with the sound of it, and think it's the best thing we've ever done. I know we should be saying that, but's true. There's quite a lot of heav...
Read more