Muse’s ‘Drones’ a killer of an LP
a relationship goes cold. Over the next few tracks, an anguish masquerading as numbness compels him to join a military outfit, where a brutal sergeant turns him into a morality-free “psycho killer” drone.
Muse’s storylines sometimes lose focus about halfway through their albums. Not so with Drones. Working with Robert John “Mutt” Lange, known for producing AC/DC and Def Leppard, the trio stays on track thematically and musically.
Lange makes Muse sound better than ever. Mercy, with its grand octave-doubled piano motif reminiscent of the group’s 2006 single Starlight, foreshadows
Drone’s turning point, hinting at suppressed emotions. On the combative Reapers, Bellamy’s guitar playing shifts frenetically from arpeggiated lines to bellicose riffs, but he develops each section fully, never sounding like he’s showboating.
The album ends with Bellamy multitracking his voice for an a cappella chorale. “Are you dead inside?” he sings. “Now you can kill from the safety of your home with drones.” Pretty but unsettling, it serves both as an elegy and warning — almost as if he was setting up a sequel.
As a newspaper guy, it’s hard not to like Muse’s futuristic concept album Drones. The tale of a young man who becomes a human-drone killing machine before rebelling against his handlers, hinges on a speech President John F. Kennedy gave to a group of newspaper publishers in 1961.
In that speech, given just after the Bay of Pigs, Kennedy warns of a “monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence,” language that has made his speech a favorite of conspiracy theorists. It also perfectly suits the autocratic-state narratives that fascinate Muse frontman Matt Bellamy. Single and lead track Dead
Inside sets up the story, depicting a protagonist determined to suppress his emotions when