New/Trending/Popular: "Drones" by Muse

With their three most recent albums: "The Resistance", "The 2nd Law", and "Drones", Muse sold 128,000, 108,536, and 84,200 records respectively during their first week of sales.

Now statistics are certainly not my thing. And it's usually one of the last things I think about when it comes to music. However, after listening to Muse's most recent album, "Drones" I became intrigued. If I, a pretty big Muse fan, was upset with this album then what are the chances that other Muse fans have lost significant interest in the group (or at least their work with this album)? 

Of course, looking at sales alone is not a great measurement of a band's success. But as a pretty large commercial rock band, one can kind of argue that their sales can correlate with the size of their fan base. Obviously with those numbers, and at least with my opinion, the quality of music that has been coming from the band has significantly decreased. Whether it is due to Matt Bellamy's lack of ability to write decent lyrics, or just the band's slightly generic work, I do not know the exact cause of the lack of interest in the UK three-piece rockers. But what I do know is that their music certainly has not gotten better since 2009's, "The Resistance". And despite its return to a more "hard rock" sound, Muse has lost a lot of their artistic vision, and have compiled a bunch of generic riffs accompanied by even more ridiculous, somewhat "Full Metal Jacket" inspired lyrics that appear on this new record. Now do not get me wrong, I agree with a lot of what Muse is trying to say thematically with some of these songs, but with Bellamy's over-dramatic delivery, unoriginality, and inability to leave anything to the imagination of the listener, I am let down and kind of bitter that one of my favorite childhood bands would put out such a lack-luster record. 

Beginning with "Dead Inside", we experience the first instance of mediocre songwriting. Especially within the context of the album, as the song is an obvious song rings as a break-up song from his recent engagement with actress Kate Hudson. It seems as though Bellamy just throws the word "Drones" into the lyrics just to make it seem as though it belongs with the rest of the songs on the album. The song also contains the archetypal Muse bridge, featuring the dramatic belting from Bellamy. I will give Muse credit in that Bellamy's voice still sounds great, and the band is still tight as ever, but with lyrics such as "Open up to me. Stop hiding from me, it's hurting babe, only you can stop the pain", it seems as though the lyrics could have been written by a teenager who just got dumped for the first time and decided to go into a Stan Marsh post Wendy breakup depression. 

Now we pretty much all knew that their second single, "Madness" off the 2nd Law, might have taken the cake for some of the cheesiest lyrics ever produced by the UK rock group. But Madness might be dethroned by the second track off Drones, "Psycho". Bellamy wails, "I'm gonna make you, I'm gonna break you, I'm gonna make you, a fucking psycho. Your ass belongs to me now". As I mentioned before, the song has a great message and touches on an important issue; however, it is done in such a way that pretty much over-satirizes the topic and it really just makes me want to turn the song off because it just seems very overdone. When Bellamy actually sings the words, "A fucking psycho", it pierces my eardrums in a similar way it would a parents if that song were to come on a pandora station in front of their kids. Just nothing sonically pleasing about Bellamy's delivery, and while I can kind of understand where he is trying to come from, it just seems way too over the top for me to take seriously. Even the guitar riff, while it does return to a similar feel of Muse's older material, feels overly simplistic and kind of bores me compared to the likes of classic riffs such as "Plug in Baby".

The track "Reapers" begins with a Van Halen inspired guitar tapping solo. Again the band proves to lack a significant amount of originality, despite Matt Bellamy's obvious skills with a guitar. And then when the lyrics and main riff come together, I am just left wanting so much more. After the release of this track's lyric video, Rolling Stone made comments comparing the track to the work of grunge heroes Rage Against the Machine. And where the main riff does sound reminiscent of something once played by Tom Morello, but the lyrics are the furthest away from edginess of Zach De La Rocha's. In fact, I cannot really decipher whether or not Bellamy is utilizing war as a metaphor for his mediocre love life, or his love life as a metaphor for how much he hates war. Either way, this metaphor seems to take the helm of this album and drive it straight into a wall.

Despite some rememberable riffs here and there and some solid musical moments from the group as a whole, the album just leaves me wanting more thematically and less theatrically. Obviously as a fan of music and a fan of art I usually associate theatrical music as being tasteful and at the very least interesting. However, when you get down to the meat and potatoes of this record, the story Bellamy writes is so overused and dried out that by the end of the record it makes me think of a score a thirteen year old kid would use for a play he had to write for his English class project, and would end up earning a solid D- at best from his teacher. Look forward to this play to be featured during their live set in Muse's upcoming 2016 international stadium tour.

Rating: 3/10