With their third studio album, Absolution, the English power trio Muse have struck black gold! Full of ominous gut-wrenching delicacies, intricacies, and eccentricities, the lyrics hit note for note with the fitting musical backdrop, but your enjoyment of this album depends more on whether you think focusing on the bitter ends of this failed experiment called "civilized" society just being pessimistic and depressing than the album itself. Absolution paints pictures of the destruction of beauty, beauty in destruction, shame in the failure of human existence, outright torment, and... what's that? Do I hear? Yes, it sounds like a touch of hope. It's a veritable Pandora's Box of exceedingly compelling orchestrations.
After an intro of marching feet that melts into a crushing piano, "Apocalypse Please" sets the tone for the album, with Matt Bellamy's tortured screaming of the prophetic chorus, "This is the end of the world!" "Stockholm Syndrome" speaks to the forced apathy that grips the world where people no longer get angry at the right things. Road rage and meaningless violence reign but no one rages at the government and other control forces that maintains the upper five percent's eighty-five percent share of the wealth while they feign generosity in the form of table scraps [Sure they bitch. Boy howdy, do they bitch, but, aside from the truly motivated, they'll just go to work in the morning]. Like certain kidnap victims, many among us are quite ill, victims of a disease called Patriotism whereby a resident of planet Earth religiously and, in his/her mind, righteously loves a certain marked off and originally named piece of land more than any other for the simple fact that their parents fucked there. Patriotism is mental disorder that, if left unchecked, will... uh... I think I got a bit off topic. Sorry, just thinking about that song "Lets My Hatred Grow." Absolution is an emotional, philosophical, sophisticated, poetic, and beautiful piece of rock music that does this pathetic planet proud. Listen and learn.
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