Muse
Origin of Symmetry

Bar Muscle Museum, the first Muse album didn’t do anything for me at all. I thought other bands out there that were doing a much better job than Muse were, and weren’t really going to look out for any further releases by them. That was until I heard Plug In Baby and I thought I’d give them another chance. Christ, I’m glad I did. This is the album that set Muse on the path to become one of the world’s biggest bands.

Opening with the now well-known piano led opening of New Born, you don’t expect THAT riff to happen based on their first album on your first listen. It really is crazy to think that is what I thought now seeing what they’ve achieved, but listening to this album for the first time on the bus back from Preston, as soon as Matt Bellamy started playing that riff I knew that this was something special. The instrumentation on the song, indeed the album, is marvellous. For a three piece to make the music they do the mind boggles. The guitar and bass work on this track and how the track fits together is just perfection. In fact, that is a theme of the album, the bass allows the guitar to go off on one with its effects, and it sounds incredible for it.

Bliss is a song that when you close your eyes, you honestly feel like you could be floating away somewhere else. The drama of Space Dementia, with its build up and apocalypse-equse feel giving with to the superb Hyper Music before the lead single, Plug In Baby keeps the album flowing perfectly. Citizen Erased keeps the quality of the album high throughout it’s 7 minutes, featuring a thunderous bass-line, soft moment with a haunting guitar over a gentle rhythm section and beautiful falsetto vocals which the US label wanted removed as they didn’t believe it had the appeal for radio-play. Idiots.

Micro Cuts starts were Citizen Erased left off, with a guitar sound not too dissimilar to Creep by Radiohead (a band which haunted them in their early days. The chorus on Micro Cuts, whilst not being sing-along material, is huge, and the last 30 seconds of the song is a true album highlight. Marvellous. Screenager slows the album down again, and is the poorest song on the album; a true album filler track. Dark Shines starts of in a similar vein, before exploding like a cheap firework; disappointingly.

Feeling Good is a cover which everyone has come to know, and does the original justice. Matt Bellamy’s vocals suit the song brilliantly, and the bass sound that they got for this song is ruddy fantastic.

Megalomania is a bit of an anti-climax to a brilliant album. I’m not saying that it is a bad song, but compared to a lot of the extreme highs on the album, it leaves a little bit more to be desired. Except for one thing; the final note of the organ ringing out. A perfect close to a brilliantly overblown album.