‘The Muse revolt kicks down the palace gates and takes no prisoners.’
After many years of uncoded warning, the uprising finally begins. In a decadent City Of The Future – the travelling Rock In Rio festival, one of the world’s god-tier fests returning to Lisbon after four years, with its exotic boulevards of local music, a finedining Chef’s Garden, videogame emporiums, rooftop bars and swimming pools overlooking the second stage – the statues of an old world order are torn down on big screens set into a gigantic sci-fi feature wall. To chants of “The will of the people!” the three leaders of the space-rock revolt, in hooded cowls and mirrored masks, take the stage to chords of strident glam rock, and lay out their manifesto and battle plan. ‘Let’s push the emperors into the ocean,’ sings chief antagonist Matt Bellamy. ‘We’ll smash your institutions to pieces.’ Will Of The People swiftly exposes its hand as a satire on Trumpian populism and a condemnation of the 2021 Capitol attack – ’With every second our anger increases, we’re gonna smash a nation to pieces,’ Bellamy continues – but Muse’s explosive entrance to Rock In Rio 2022 certainly makes for bold and historic stuff.
Until now, day one of this two-weekend mega-fest has played out entirely on-script. Liam Gallagher delivers an unbalanced set, pushing his solo material far too hard on a festival crowd who’ve turned up early and get a bare smattering of Oasis hits. The National cement their role as the millennial R.E.M. with an hour of scintillating piano-led mood tunes and fantastic art-rock anthems like Buzzblood Ohio and Mr November, singer Matt Berninger occasionally distracted from his intense mutterings by the ‘angels’ zip-lining across the front of the main stage.
But when Muse storm the stage, having comprehensively shed the 80s-retro-futurist feel of 2018’s Simulation Theory album and with a timely new slogan – “We need a revolution, so long as we stay free” – it feels like the kick-start on post-pandemic rock. With flame flumes exploding across the stage like we’re on the front line of the fight-back, Muse’s new, state-ofthe-world material reflects the precipitous condition of humanity in 2022, its fear, paranoia and dislocation proving fuel for authoritarianism and its democracies crumbling at the thumb-clicks of liars and frauds. The synth-pop Compliance attacks the culture and tactics of online thought police, while Kill Or Be Killed, an oldschool Muse scorch-rocker in the vein of Stockholm Syndrome – seems driven by the many manias of isolation. As the world looks more and more like a Muse song, Muse, combining their hardcore crunch with synthetic pop textures more skilfully with each passing album, sound ever more vital.
There’s time left before civilisation’s collapse for larks, though. Between new songs, Muse make up for the relative lack of pizzazz (no robotic dance troupes, inflatable drones or flaming symbols of the futurist revolution tonight, although the giant inflatable zombie from their Simulation Theory tour makes a guest appearance) with an incredible stream of hits. Intergalactic pop (Starlight, Pressure, the none-moreQueen Madness), corroded glam (Uprising, Psycho) and stampeding space-rock (Plug In Baby, Time Is Running Out, Knights Of Cydonia) combine in a 90-minute powerhouse of a set, peppered with jams on AC/DC, Rage Against The Machine and Hendrix riffs. Bellamy demolishes his amp with his guitar amid the opera-metal mayhem of Stockholm Syndrome, and plays Behold, The Glove on the touchpad wristwatch of a huge mechanical glove that looks like something an alien ogre might punch Superman into space with.
In such opulent surroundings as Rock In Rio, the Muse revolt kicks down the palace gates and takes no prisoners. Their time is now.