Black Holes and Revelations

I wouldn't consider myself a huge fan or anything, but it's ridiculous to deny an album its deserved praise when every song is as good as this record shows. Rhythm section here does a lot of really cool accelerating/decelerating tempo stuff on many of these tracks and the melodies on the ballads and rock tracks alike stick in the ear like clockwork.

Knights of Cydonia kicks ass. 4/5.

By the time "Black Holes and Revelations" was released, Muse had reached the commercial peak of their career. By that point, however, I had largely lost interest in the band. A musician friend recommended their debut album, "Showbiz", to me in 1999, and it remains my favourite of their albums to this day. This is contrary to my usual listening habits, as subsequent albums were significantly more progressive, complex and experimental than the debut, but also smoother, more bombastic and more calculated. When I listened to "Black Holes and Revelations" again today, some 20 years on, I was surprised at how much I liked it — at least a few tracks. Perhaps that’s what bothers me: Muse produce either little strokes of genius ("Take a Bow", "Supermassive Black Hole", "Assassin") or complete lead ballons ("Invincible", "Glorious"). They are a good band, but their albums are overrated and lack a clear musical direction, at least on this album. At least not if you consider exuberant vocals, fast tempi and massive intensity with extreme dynamics to be stylistic elements rather than a coherent concept.

I don't think this of the best Muse album

A little too much for me. Enjoyed Plug In Baby when I was 14, but been bemused by Muse since then. Not my guys.

'& our freedom's consuming itself / What we've become.' Whatever Muse is getting at, which is some sort of miserable gravity pull of Coldplay w/ the worst aspects of Radiohead, I can do w/o. This's not profound: 'Our hopes & expectations / Black holes & revelations, yeah.' At best it's hokey, a drab conceptual piece that goes w/ no mood, at worst it's a blasted resurrection of prog sensibilities that should've died out after The Wall. There's nerdy & pretentious, there's dense & vapid, & somehow Black Holes & Revelations is all four. 'Why can't we see / That when we bleed, we bleed the same?' It gets worse as it goes along, & anytime you think they've figured something out, it's ruined by space sounds, tedious drama, & Bellamy's bad singing.

I like Muse and am familiar with this album, it's in my library. But this is not Muse's best. Not by a long-shot. After the Absolution album, they got stuck in this mode of perpetually making hollow arena rock anthems.

Better than Coldplay

Bombastic over-produced nonsense. Very obviously the spiritual heirs to Queen AND NO THAT IS NOT A COMPLIMENT

"Finally... some good fuckin' food" - Gordon Ramsey

But seriously after a 13-streak of sub-4/5 albums, its nice to get something that actually hits with me. I don't think this is my favorite Muse album (probably Absolution), but it is a good one, and their last good album before they devolved into incredibly cliche "fuck the government, we will resist" tropes. Very "old man yelling at clouds" energy on those later albums.

That said, this is a good album. Songs like Supermassive Black Hole, Map of the Problematique, and Knights of Cydonia are great. I'm not very enamored with prog these days, but alt-prog like Muse, Coheed, and Mars Volta I can still get into.

I will say, while it doesn't affect my score, this album can fall into spots where the songs are clearly ripping off other (better) songs. Map of the Problematique is clearly heavily inspired by Depeche Mode's Enjoy the Silence, and Soldier's Poem just straight lifts the guitar from Can't Help Falling in Love (Elvis) for part of its melody.

But yeah, very good album.

Ok I kind of think that I am much harder on albums/bands that are more recent and I never took the time to investigate but am now learning from this project that I don’t like.

Season: Early Fall
Favorite Song: Starlight

Muse are a band whose ambition is impossible to question and whose maximalism is an acquired taste. Black Holes and Revelations is their most accessible record, which is a relative term — this is still a grandiose, apocalyptic, stadium-filling statement about government conspiracy and environmental collapse delivered with complete conviction and considerable technical firepower.
The record takes a few tracks to find its footing. When “Supermassive Black Hole” arrives at track three it’s a genuine surprise — a funk-influenced, Prince-adjacent groove that sounds unlike anything else in their catalog and briefly suggests a different and more interesting version of this album might have been possible. It’s the moment where the production steps back from bombast into something more physical and alive.
Then the maximalism reasserts itself, and the middle stretch settles into capable but unremarkable territory. The unexpected highlight arrives in “Soldier’s Poem” — a quiet, hymn-like a cappella piece that opens a window in the middle of all the grand gesturing. When Muse stops being Muse for three minutes and just sings, something genuinely human comes through. That it’s the most affecting moment on the record says something about where the emotional center actually lives versus where the band thinks it does.
The back half offers “Hoodoo” and “Knights of Cydonia” — the latter with actual horns, a welcome addition — as genuine bright spots. Not enough to push it to four, but enough to keep it as an honest three rather than a charitable one.

An album (and band) that played a crucial role in getting me "properly" into music and laying the foundations for my current tastes. I first heard this when I was 9, in 2008, through my Dad having and playing the CD, and whilst he would often play his music at home (mostly electronic, prog, new wave and 90s rock), Black Holes and Revelations is one of the first albums I heard that truly made sense to me and demanded my attention.

This was more or less the first time that any music of his resembling prog "clicked" with me; courtesy of its bombastic soundscapes, ambitious structures and modernised, yet stylistically 70s-esque modular synth workouts, whilst prioritising huge refrains and ensuring catchy, accessible songwriting for my unprimed ears. It eventually completely contextualised the likes of Genesis, King Crimson, Gentle Giant, Yes et al. for me, leading me down a rabbit hole of "weird" prog whilst also spurring me onto anthemic stadium rock. Before long, I was a Muse megafan with several of their other albums illegally torrented onto my new MP3 player I asked for that Christmas, but this one has easily had the most airtime from me over the years.

At best a rip off Radiohead with pop ambition replacing creative ones. At worst they're wannabe U2 at their most bloated and boring. Grating vocals, unearned peaks, predictable dynamic shifts, corny electronica. Piss poor. Just some of the worst stuff the 21st century has churned out yet.

This first song kind of sounds like Radiohead. It's making me want to listen to Radiohead. I like the way he says starlight. Steeyarrrlight. Oh em gee he said black holes and revelations! That's the album name! I LOVE SUPERMASSIVE BLACK HOLE. I LOVE TWILIGHT. I'M PLAYING BASEBALL WITH THE CULLENS IN MY MIND RN. I already really liked this song even before I had watched twilight, but I think the baseball-thunderstorm scene made me like it so much better. To be honest I feel like supermassive black hole is gonna be the only really good or unique song on this album. Let's see if time proves my point. Gang, "Map of the problematique" is kinda giving coldplay or trashy 2000s/2010s pop band. Not trashy as in Ayesha Erotica type trashy, more like what the hell is this corporate machine slop.

Jesus, Muse used to be so great. This was the last of the truly great albums before it became slightly patchy (and then off the deep end bad).
Some all time classics on this and love the desert rock influence.

This is a 2000s rock album. It mixes loud, distorted guitar with synthesizers and mediocre lyrics. It is often very theatrical, going for drawn-out intros and highly dramatic crescendos in many songs. It's also somewhat pretentious, going for political themes and love lyrics that don't quite land. It thinks it's very ambitious, but it doesn't really do much with the sound that's of particular interest. It's not a good album, but it isn't completely terrible either. It's mostly just mediocre, like most other 2000s "indie rock" albums.

3/5. Muse gets a bit too much hate these days I think, which to be fair the band is not helping as they have been a parody of themselves for the past 15 or so years. But some of the early albums like Origin of Symmetry or Absolution are still great.
As for Black Holes and Revelations, it starts really strong. The run from “Take a Bow” to “Map of the Problematique” is some good, dramatic stuff. But then it goes into a pretty flabby middle section. It slowly picks back up towards the end till “Knights of Cydonia” which is one of Muse’s best songs and super fun to play on guitar. On this listen I found myself also not being the biggest fan of the lyrics on here, often they’re okay but there’s some moments like on “city of delusion” that sound like they’re from the first draft of a Y.A. Dystopia novel. I never really buy into the dystopian future that is trying to be portrayed. but the strong start and finish on this album make it a good, worthwhile listen.

this album feels painfully pretentious, made all the worse by the fact it really doesn't gel.

There's a few memorable songs on here. but it's another example of a 2000s album where the best parts are just worse versions of 80s/90s albums. in this case Depeche Mode doing some heavy lifting.

The beginning of the demise of a once decent band.