LIVES - MUSE: Teignmouth Titans Detonate The Bomb(ast) At Tiny London Club Gig

Kerrang! (Issue No.1587)

September 26th 2015

A SUPERMASSIVE black hole has incredible crushing power. Throw an item of your choosing into one - a ball, a car, a skyscraper - and even the biggest thing you can imagine will be squeezed into an area smaller than you ever thought possible. Tonight, in similar fashion. Muse - last spotted headlining Download - have chosen to stuff and compress their usual grandstanding stadium shows into a whites-of-the-eyes assault on the 1,1 00-capacity Electric Ballroom, as a way of celebrating the announcement of their forthcoming world tour. And Matt Bellamy and co prove they’re able to slip between stadium supremacy and sweatbox intimacy just as deftly as their Brit-rock juggernaut peers Biffy Clyro - albeit with the odd bit of shrinking pain.

 The good Muse first, though. Despite the bombast of his music. Matt isn’t generally prone to hyperbole, yet has declared latest album Drones to be his band’s finest offering to date. While some fans disagree, the healthy quota of cuts from it blasted out tonight (Reapers, Psycho, The Handler, Mercy) provides the opportunity to re-evaluate them as proper blockbusters, standing tall and powerful in the set. So much so that their vibes have permeated Muse’s older tunes, too - with Time Is Running Out recalibrated here as a lustier beast (with added mood lighting, obvs).

 Now to be the bearers of some not-so-good Muse. Given that this is an 85-minute show, you’d have assumed there wouldn’t be a wasted second. Unfortunately, this downsizing hasn’t put paid to all the trappings of a ‘big’ show; with the between-song musical vignettes (featuring jams of Led Zeppelin, AC/DC and Rage Against The Machine numbers) presumably coming at the expense of fan favourites like Bliss, Madness and Assassin - although Matt explains the latter is missing because Chris Wolstenholme “doesn’t have the right bass for it’’.

In short: it’s clear enough that Muse approach this big-band-in-small-room thing with far less space for spontaneous, do-it-for-the-fuck-of-it dicking about than Green Day or Foo Fighters do.

 Perhaps these less vital moments are exaggerated because, at its peak, this gig is as intense and exciting as Muse crammed in a club should be - with the enormous riff-buffet of Stockholm Syndrome and the way Knights Of Cydonia gallops and explodes being genuinely worth the £20 ticket price alone. And that’s almost nothing to spend on a one-off like this, and the chance to see these supermassive tunes in a (relatively) super-small venue.

(Rating: Four K's)

FAN SHOUT!

MARK - EDGWARE

“That was incredible! I heard about it on the radio this morning and had to be here, as it’s such a small venue. Everyone who was here tonight has been a part of history!”

AUDREY - PARIS

“This is the 10th time I have seen Muse live. I’ve seen them in big and small venues, and they’re great wherever they play. My favourite song tonight was Knights Of Cydonia.”

SEAN - CAMDEN

"I thought they were pretty excellent. I’ve seen them about eight or nine times, but this is the first time I’ve seen them in a small venue. They were very good, but I kind of missed the light show.”

Link to Muse Index (all articles)