It’s pretty hard to mistake Bellamy for anyone else in rock and he’s phenomenal behind the mic. His range covers the gamut dropping to some lower bass through his tenor and what can is now only be considered his signature alto. You can really get a listen to what a great singer Bellamy is here. “Mercy” softens the tone quite a bit but still brings those strong Muse guitar chords. Leave it to the listener to decide what the band is trying to convey here but on the surface it seems they have little love for the military with lyrics like these I’m gonna make you/I’m gonna break you/I’m gonna make you/Your ass belongs to me now.īut seriously if you can get past the foul-mouth drill sergeant and whatever they’re trying to say politically it’s a fun song with a great beat that begs for high volume. The second “song” is just the intro to “Psycho” called “Drill Sergeant” which is exactly that as a faux 21-second recording begins with a drill sergeant berating his subordinate before leading into “Psycho.” The heavy guitar chords propel this song but the drill sergeant makes several unnecessary additional appearances that only serves to interrupt. It really picks up musically just after the 2:30 mark with a great keyboard driving melody. Read our interview with bassist Chris Wolstenholme here.Drones starts off with “Dead Inside” which is such a Muse song complete with Dominic Howard’s catchy drum beat, the heavy background electronics and Bellamy’s vocal work. ‘Drones’ is set to drop in Australia on June 5th. They’ve given fans a reason to care about the album itself as a whole, which in today’s musical climate, is no mean feat. This time around, Muse haven’t just notched up another worthy addition to their album collection.
But together, Drones is so much more than just the sum of its parts. That said, if you rip away the focus from the narrative and boil the album down to its musical components, what you’re left with is a collection of killer, car-radio-friendly rock tracks. These kinds of Orwellian themes, which we’ve seen crop up time and again across Muse’s discography, take centre stage here, and there’s a strong sense that everything that came before, from Citizen Erased to The Resistance, was all just a build-up to this one blockbuster musical event. Threaded through with spoken word audio, including a famous JFK speech about duplicitous cold war tactics, Drones seems to promote vigilance against those in power, who would seek to use technology to help them keep it, to humanity’s massive detriment. Although the titular acapela finale track, Drones, does end things on a somewhat ambiguous note (pun totally intended) likely because postmodernism, there seems to be a foreboding message that underpins the whole thing. Speaking of which, Drones unfolds a tale of a hero who is brainwashed by the state to kill without mercy, before being redeemed by love, defecting and revolting, but *spoiler alert* ultimately failing to save the ones he loves. There can be no doubt, Muse are back up to their old tricks, using their core three-piece rock sound to relate this enigmatic dystopian parable to the masses. There’s also a touch of Pink Floyd and Neil Young circa Dead Man about the disc’s post-apocalyptic penultimate track, The Globalist. Instead of dubstep, electro funk and orchestral arrangements we have Matt Bellamy showcasing the kind of dazzling guitar work that made him something of a six-string icon back in the day, with the explosive solo that rips into the epic metal stormer, Reapers, triggering Eddie Van Halen Eruption-style flashbacks. Gone are the multi-coloured test tubes of stylistic experimentation that characterised The 2nd Law.
Freddie Mercury lives on in the monstrously stacked vocals of Defector, Revolt and Aftermath, a trio of triumphant arena rock anthems that occur in sequence during the disc’s second act. In fact, Queen’s influence can be heard charging throughout the circuitry of Drones. The English trio’s latest offering crafts an emotionally arduous and action-packed narrative that unfolds chronologically across the disc, following in the footsteps of such watershed albums as The Who’s Tommy and Pink Floyd’s The Wall, with the musical bombast of Queen’s A Night At The Opera.