SOUND JUDGEMENT

THE LATEST ALBUM RELEASES RATED AND REVIEWED

MUSE – SIMULATION THEORY

AN industrial thud announces the arrival of the band’s eighth album. From then on, Simulation Theory takes the listener on a rollercoaster of sounds.

The band’s signatures are here: frontman Matt Bellamy’s falsetto vocal runs, rock opera guitars and a bucket-load of bravado. Get Up And Fight, for example, is classic Muse. But there’s also a vein of new ideas running through its 11 tracks. Propaganda and Break It To Me are preposterous collisions of stadium-size vocals, UFO sounds and vocoder-warped R&B choruses.

Muse have returned to the embrace of knowing camp, and they sound all the better for it.