Drones

About

Ahead of starting their seventh album, Muse looked across their career and asked themselve, “What’s been our best work?” Matt Bellamy, Chris Wolstenholme, and Dom Howard began homing in on the forceful alchemy they had summoned with guitar, ba, and drums over the course of their first three records and felt that it was a sound they wanted to reconnect with. Drum machine, programming, and electronic flourishes had taken increasing prevalence in Muse’s music over a run of albums from 2006’s <i>Black Holes and Revelations</i> to 2012’s <i>The 2nd Law</i> and the trio had begun to feel more like producers than performers when it came to studio work. <i>Drones</i> realigned their focus back onto being one of the world’s most rip-roaring rock band. It’s why they chose to bring in an outside producer after two records of doing the job themselves—and who better when you want to make earth-shaking rock music than Mutt Lange? Setting the band to work at The Warehouse Studio in Vancouver, Canada, the Def Leppard and AC/DC collaborator helped Muse craft a muscular, dynamic album that sought to marry old-school, amped-up hard rock with forward-thinking sensibilitie. For Bellamy, the idea of reconnecting to the sound of a band playing together in a room was a perfect reflection for the concepts running through <i>Drones</i>, a record exploring the idea of humanity’s empathy versus the calculated efficiency of technology. That the theme of losing control of your life recurs throughout the record was no accident—coming out of a breakup with his fiancée, Kate Hudson, Bellamy intended the record’s conceptual narrative to work as a parallel arc to the turbulence in his own life at the time. Away from the intertwining dystopian drama and personal turmoil, <i>Drones</i> is simply a boisterous and bristling rock record that pairs Muse’s refined songcraft and anthemic sing-alongs with a series of searing riffs and pummeling groove. “Psycho” builds a powerhouse rhythm around a barbed, bluesy lick, “Reapers” is all guitar virtuosity and ELO-meets-Metallica flamboyance, while a callback to the title track from their 1999 debut <i>Showbiz</i> halfway through “The Handler”’s foreboding march feels like Muse taking their rock vows again. .

via Apple Music

The Clerk says

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