Knights of Hyperbole
When I told a friend who reads this site that I was going to see Muse at T on the Fringe, he laughed and rolled his eyes. “You and Muse! Muse, Muse, Muse!” I had to concede his point... it’s possible that I may have hyped the band just a tad over the years.
Origin of Symmetry: A noisy guitar-crunching shrieking wailing exhilarating blast of my god, they’ve saved rock’n’roll excitement...
Absolution: It was hard to believe they could top Origin, and they have, oh yes; they’ve over-the-topped it. Muse are the kings of the high-wire, thrilling the rock and roll circus as they go higher and higher.
Black Holes and Revelations: I guess I will have to scream it in all-caps: WHEN THE HISTORY OF ’00s ROCK IS WRITTEN, MUSE WILL BE ON THE FRONT COVER.
Showbiz was pretty good, too.
The trouble is, by setting the bar so high with my rave review for Origin I’ve had nowhere to go that’s higher, and have ended up bashing my words against the limits of hyperbole like a bat flapping at the ceiling. So I’ll have to keep this review modest, just so I have somewhere to go next time.
That was the best rock concert I’ve ever been to, ever. The only one that’s come close was Midnight Oil in 2001.
For reference purposes, I’ve put their hugeness into convenient graph form:
So, how huge were they? So huge that they opened with Black Holes’ closing track, “Knights of Cydonia”, and closed with its opening track, “Take a Bow”, just to prove that both songs were equally huge. Every song in between? Huge. Guitars? Huge. Drums? Huge. Matt Bellamy’s piano interludes? Huge. “Starlight”, “New Born”, “Apocalypse Please”, “Time is Running Out”, “Supermassive Black Hole”, “Plug In Baby”, “Stockholm Syndrome”? Huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge.
And the audience? Huge. I could hardly hear Bellamy’s vocals half the time, because we were smack in the middle of the world’s biggest Muse singalong. Fantastic. Absolutely fantastic.
I took some photos. For obvious reasons, some are a bit blurry. Follow the subtle link below to see them.