#36; The Resistance – Love really is our Resistance

So, it’s finally arrived. The Resistance. Muse’s fifth studio album, something I have been hyping for months upon months on Twitter and in the build-up annoying a lot of people most likely in the sheer excitement of just simply listening to it. I’m gonna get straight to the chase and tell you how I hear the album song by song… here we go.

1. Uprising – 5:05
The album kicks us off into Muse’s resistance with a stomping bassline and a synthy section worth of Dr Who itself as many of you will now have heard by now. It’s the first single off The Resistance and it’s an absolutely fantastic opening track. Considering the album’s title, The Resistance, lyrics it fits in perfectly. ‘They will not force us, they will stop degrading us, they will not control us, we will be victorious!’ screams the chorus followed by a glam-rock guitar squeal of ‘COME ON!’; musically the song works so wonderfully well in my opinion. It builds up layer by layer – the first chorus seems quite empty and simple, then the guitar kicks in, and by the second chorus it feels like the Uprising has literally grown in size, a larger, more violent-sounding chorus following by a length but simple guitar solo that leads into the final grand chorus which, by now, sounds huge in comparison to it’s opening version. It’s a fantastic song and a fantastic opener as it creates the scene for the album and lays the foundation for what’s ahead which being musically listenable with influences of Goldfrapp, Gary Glitter (bare with me) and even Blondie evident and yet still sounding different enough to obviously be Muse. 85%

2. Resistance – 5:47
The end of Uprising leads us into a haunting intro for Resistance, a calming wave of sound leads into a tribal drumbeat and almost dance-esque piano tinkling that take us into the world of George Orwell and the romance that makes up his epic 1984 fiction involving Winston and Julia. The entire song is completely 1984 – the desire to get out of a controlled society, the desire to resist this and carry on their love, the desire to fight against everything that is trying to hold them apart. Resistance is an absolutely beautiful song and from the ground up totally based on the romance mentioned previously -  ‘If we live a life in fear, I'll wait a thousand years, Just to see you smile again;  Kill your prayers for love and peace, You'll wake the thought police, We can't hide the truth inside’ – combined with a double sided chorus that questions what could be wrong alongside the voice of reasoning telling the subjects why resistance is vital to pursuing theirs feeling. The drumbeat through the song is consistency excellent, driving the song alongside the cries of rebellion from Bellamy’s vocals and a startling bassline that goes hand in hand with the drumming from Dom Howard. It’s a shame the song comes to such an abrupt ending, ending on the synthy emptiness of haunting noises that opened the track but it works amazingly well. An absolute gem of a song and probably one of the best on the album. Love really is our Resistance. 94%

3. Undisclosed Desires – 3:56
Undisclosed Desires is probably one of the more surprising points of the album but it’s down to personal taste whether this is a good or bad surprise. It’s basically Matt Bellamy’s attempt at taking Muse into a new area with R&B foundations but looking towards the synth-pop that can be heard in Depeche Mode’s 80’s library and more modern artists/producers such as Timbaland. The song is incredibly basic for Muse – it has no guitar, but rather a processed beat of noises, a first-ever use of slap bass that strikes through the choruses in the song and even the drumbeat is barely evident. Yet it amazingly works for the band. The lyrics are absolutely fantastic personally – the song feels so light, and yet the lyrics come across as so dark and almost violent ‘I want to exorcise the demons from your past’ – yet it’s still a very strange song to analyse and review because it’s totally not Muse, yet they make it Muse. It’s not one of the stronger songs on the album but you can’t fault Bellamy for uncovering new areas for the band to work within genre-wise and still come out the other side sounding relatively comfortably in these new adventures of music. For me, the chorus is where the song really stands out with the soothing vocals speaking out sinister feelings of passion really making it a fantastic juxtaposition. It’s a great song but it’s something completely different. 79%

4. United States of Eurasia (+Collateral Damage) – 5:48
Another lengthy song and another vital addition to the album. Once again following the feelings and story of what can be seen in Winston and Julia’s story in 1984, a soothing combination of piano, strings and a simple tap of drums bring the song to a gentle start before crashing into an absolute wall of music Freddie Mercury would be more than proud to be part of. The song absolutely burst into life with a squealing guitar not too far off Bohemian Rhapsody and a scream of vocals that surprise the system, soon followed by a menacing bassline holding together an orchestra and piano section surely influenced from Lawrence of Arabia, not that this is a bad thing! But once USoE comes to life, it truly does start lighting up in fabulous ways. It’s completely over the top, but it’s completely Muse in a contrast to everything we heard in Undisclosed Desires. The lyrics, the strings, everything about USoE is grand, grand, grand. A growing trend starts occurring from here I notice – a mention of ‘they’, obviously directed at those in control, the reason behind this resistance. USoE absolutely goes out in style with more unbelievably over the top and grand surprises, the band screaming eura-SIA! SIA! SIA! (as Muse say themselves, you can’t help but chuckle at this like they did themselves!) leading towards a beautiful cover of a Chopin piece, here entitled Collateral Damage. This is all Matt – the strings, the idea, the piano, everything about Collateral Damage is sweet and simple and again a juxtaposition can be felt with the piano that speaks out so freely and sweetly reigning over the sounds of terror and children crying as a fighter jet rushes over to close the song. It’s epic. It’s over the top. But it’s brilliant, and it’s completely Muse. 90%

5. Guiding Light – 4:14
The fighter jet that sends out Collateral Damage leads up into a striking drumbeat that introduces Guiding Light, a song that can simply be described as The Resistance’s power ballad no questions asked. It’s very easy to simply compare this song to U2, who were an influence on the song as mentioned by Matt previously, but I do have quite mixed feelings on Guiding Light. It seems a very simple song, a bassline that stands out alongside the striking drums but the middle section provides a gorgeous little guitar solo that you feel just wants to go on further but doesn’t stand out long enough to be fully appreciated under Bellamy’s groans. It’s nothing hugely over the top as we saw with USoE, but the end of the song feels a little underwhelming in that it doesn’t seem to really go anywhere structure wise. That said, it’s still completely listenable and the lyrics once again fall back on a feel of romance and love, but it’s probably the weakest song on The Resistance. 71%

6. Unnatural Selection –6:55
Ah, Unnatural Selection. Every Muse album will see the older Muse fans ask for something that even resembles Muse’s older, louder, thrashier genre of music seen on the likes of Origin of Symmetry, songs that are based on heavier guitar. Unnatural Selection, for me, is such a nod towards their older stuff there’s absolutely no way this song can be ignored not only just for that but because it really stands out as a huge, heavy, angry bit of modern Muse that I definitely want to see more of. Opening with an organ to please all Megalomaniacs out there just to hear it back on a Muse record, Matt simply asks for the truth whilst the powers that be look down and laugh, before the song absolutely explodes in the most wonderfully angry riff. I can’t stress enough how much I LOVE the riff that makes up Unnatural Selection, but the entire song is nearly 7 minutes of anger, desperation frustration. And my god does it sound good! The pace is constantly electric, thrashing it’s way through with Matt’s distorted vocals going along with the journey until a sudden halt in pace completely brings Unnatural Selection to a shocking stop, a structure similar to that found in their classic Citizen Erased in which the song’s feel and context enters a different slow atmosphere building it’s way back up into this huge epic ball of rock, for lack of a better expression. The actual structure may confuse newer Muse fans as it’s quite different to the stuff they’ve done recently but if you’ve listened to the band for a long time, you should love how fantastically setup the song is in this way. That said, after the slow middle section, the song bows out in a huge thrashing metal riff that, again, I can’t explain enough how much I love it. The entire song is just perfect for the album and just what I was hoping to find on The Resistance! even better yet, it’s genuinely one of Muse’s best tracks in their entire library I have to say! 98%

7. MK Ultra - 4:06
Along with Unnatural Selection, here is another track I was absolutely looking forward to hearing in advance of the release of the album based on preview reactions from various media sources. Opening with a strong electronic backing and another massive bassline throttling away, MK Ultra seems entirely based on paranoid beliefs screaming against those ‘looking in and breaking through’.  The synth on the song is absolutely tremendous, it constantly lingers around in the background combined at times with voices whispering from the shadows alongside a marching drumbeat and bassline almost dripping out the paranoid suspicious that the lyrics insist on expressing but as a whole song, it works beautifully and the point of the song comes across perfectly clear with these different factors all making one kick ass piece of synth-based rock. Once again massive guitar riffs smash through these walls of worry and suspicion to huge effect, perhaps not to the same effect as Unnatural Selection due to their lack of length but they still appear in this fantastic piece. It almost feels quite spacey at times, in a wierd bizarre way, with the constant synth driving the song on, but I can’t fault MK Ultra. Once again, I absolutely adore it. Fast, pacey, paranoid, and goes out with an absolute kick in the stomach riff. Brilliant. 92%

8. I Belong To You/Mon Cœur S'ouvre à Ta Voix – 5:38
After being punched in the face with 2 massive modern rock tracks, Muse seem to jump into a completely new dimension with IBtY. As you can plainly see in the title, yes, it does feature a French part of the song. Coming into the album, I had a lot of fears going into this track as the 30 second preview we were issued with from the band a few weeks ago made the song sound like Maroon 5 had come over for a holiday for a week and given them some ideas. However, I shouldn’t be surprised that Muse completely overcome the challenge of attempting new genres with amazing ease and create a fantastic piano based romantic epic, to be quite honest. The song has a massively upbeat feel to it as it opens, Bellamy humming his way into the song whilst the piano jingles via a wonderfully jazzy beat. Lyrically, the entire song is directly romantic and even gets a shameful but pleasantly funny mention of Muse within the lyrics. Once again though, much is the case with United States of Eurasia, you just have to lighten up and love the song for it’s completely ridiculous yet utterly brilliant moments. I Belong to You comes with them in the bucketful – the song stopping halfway through completely to allow Bellamy on the piano to sing a French interlude (completely French!) alongside an orchestra and the remaining members of the band still gripping onto their sanity despite this ridiculous change in context for their music, the similarities to classic Disney soundtracks almost jumps straight in your face in the Mon Coeur interlude, the fact that it’s all nothing what you’d expect from Muse and yet once again they absolutely make it their music with such ease, the fact the we see a French clarinet solo out of nowhere!! – it should be ridiculous and almost pompous but it’s listenable, it all has a wonderfully beautiful structure, and it’s completely brilliant. I thought I was going to hate this song, to be brutally honest, and yet I sit here after many listens humming everything from it. How?! 90%

9. 10. 11. Exogenesis Symphony (Part I: Overture – 4:18), (Part II: Cross Pollination – 3:56), (Part III: Redemption – 4:37) – 12:51
As far as I’m concerned, the Exogenesis symphony is quite simply the main event of this album. A year or two ago, Matt Bellamy spoke of the work that he was doing in the background despite the various albums Muse have brought out in the past few years. He mentioned a ‘symphonic monster’, a 15 minute or so song that was based entire on a 40 piece orchestra that he wanted to make one day, progressing in charting his ideas to eventually get it out into the masses. Finally, it is here with the Exogenesis symphony and I absolutely could not wait to hear this. As the album progresses, it tells the story of anger, frustration, love and a desire to get away from a society that is controlled and watched over. This final 13 minute (when combined) symphony tells the tale of a despite to leave the earth, be rid of the society we have created for ourselves, break the atmosphere and start everything again. A little depressing, perhaps, but if anyone can do it it would be the ambitious Bellamy. As you can see, the song is broken into 3 individual tracks but for the sake of the review, and the structure of the symphony, it seems sensible to review it as a whole. Overture opens up the symphony as expected – a large scale orchestra backing up screaming violins before launching arpeggios similar to the type of thing you could see Philip Glass undertake in his music. A build up in drums erupts and, the symphony doesn't begin for me, but rather the journey begins. Bellamy, constantly stuck in the land of falsetto for his vocals here, screams of the wanting to be away from the earth and from everything that makes our society a worse place to be in. Almost indecipherable, his words are basic - “Aping my soul, You stole my overture, Trapped in God’s program, Oh I can’t escape…” before questioning his existence. The true highlight is the actual instrumental though, with distorted guitars in the background accompany these arpeggio orchestral creating a hugely doomed feel to this opening, an absolutely jaw dropping start I personally felt with all the various factors coming together to back up the fear in Bellamy’s words. Once the opening part has soothed into the distance, Cross Pollination crashes in with a damning piano section, the scale matching the sheer ambition of the entire project undertaken by Bellamy here. Soon enough, his piano is accompanied by the orchestra returning from the opening section and the two combined create an eerie, floating atmosphere where aurally to myself created my own impression of floating away into nowhere. Bellamy’s piano continues to smash its way up and down the scale whilst the orchestra stops to allow the lyrics to return - ‘Rise above the crowds, And wade through toxic clouds, Breach the outer sphere, The edge of all our fears’ – emphasising the appeal to get away. However, soon enough the symphony builds up with the entire band and orchestra all becoming involved. Violins and strings swirling away in the background, the bassline and drumming going hand in hand with Bellamy’s piano with the message to spread the need to be away from the dystopian environment being outspoken so much in the lyrics. Before closing the second part though, a beautifully crafted piano piece sends us out in peace, tranquillity and calm whilst the orchestra furthermore sends this wonderful journey onto it’s next step. Before you know it, the piano closes down and silence grips our hearing as we move into the final part, Redemption. Once more, we are greeted by piano but now much more soft and delicate in it’s tone. Resembling Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, the emotional almost begins to seep out of this piano as it gently introduces what will be the ending. Violins and strings soon grow in stature and help create this world of peace Bellamy seems so sure on creating in leaving his dystopia. Part 3 is simply gorgeous though, it truly is a fittingly beautiful way to end a stunning and ambitious set of symphonies. Whilst we began this part with peace and quiet, the song soon comes to life with a moderate pace whilst the vocals, almost being whispered in the tranquillity, wonder ‘why can’t we just start over again?’ and promising ‘This time we’ll get it right’, a desperate plea for a new chance and an emotionally grabbing insight into the wonder that Bellamy promised us. The vocals soon die down, and we resume the wondrous piano and orchestra that introduced Part 3. It slowly takes us out, fading into the distance and ending, for me, Muse’s most awe inspiring, beautifully crafted and simply staggering piece of music to date. It has no mega hard riffs to mosh to, or a chorus that sticks in your mind like chewing gum, or anything like that. Instead it brings a whole new Muse to the table, one that they have hinted at in the past with Butterflies and Hurricanes, with Hoodoo, with Megalomania – a Muse that are not afraid to dip into a classic past and create something that most modern bands wouldn’t dare attempt. My only complaint of the Exogenesis Symphony is that I would love it to be longer, but with that complaint I feel like I am spoiling myself. It’s the absolute highlight of the album, the entire symphony as one, and I hope Bellamy, Wolstenholme and Howard keep the sheer size of this project in mind for the future and take another look at making it even bigger for a future release. 100%

So after all these years, that was it. It featured wonderfully addictive riffs, it features moments of surprise, shock and sheer unimaginable bliss, and most of all for me, it featured everything I expected from The Resistance and so much more. I’m still undecided if this is Muse’s best album to date in terms of the content because of how much I love Absolution (obviously my favourite album) but I can tell you right now it is definitely up there rivalling it. As time goes on, the band will settle into playing the songs live, the songs will settle into my playlists and I’ll grow even more fond of the album probably but it is simply epic. I realise that the word ‘epic’ is vastly overused but I can’t sum up any other word to explain The Resistance. The album is a 53 minute journey that takes you from the initial thoughts of an uprising against society to the sheer depths of wanting to get away from it all completely. Muse fans around the world should rejoice in what has been created for The Resistance, but not only that, music fans should come and embrace what has been created with this staggering album. Only the stupid should resist The Resistance. 89% (Based on average of songs)