Muse return with their fourth album, Black Holes and Revelations and it’s quite interesting to see that they’ve added more electronics, more production but still managed to keep their base of guitar, drums and bass still providing the same indie rock tunes.

Opening with the track Take a Bow, the vocals seem barely coherent as they’re moaned over the speakers, but start to make sense as the music picks up pace and the vocals match this. It’s a very trippy start with electronic sounds that come across as bubbly and hypnotic.

Starlight brings us back to farmiliar ground with the clear sounds of a keyboard being used, that or a piano, but it’s probably a keyboard. Nothing wrong with that, and nothing wrong with the track either as it runs along at a fair old pace, and breaks into thrashing guitar and the bubbly electronics of the previous track with a catchy and memorable chorus.

Another track that oozes the familarity of Muse is Supermassive Black Hole. It’s probably a bit early to have a heavily repetitive track, but here it is and it does start to grate on the old brain after a while. I can only listen to it once in a blue moon. A notable point is the use of Cher-esque vocal distortions.

A favourite track and one that deserves to be played as loud as possible is also the most Muse-like track which seems ready to explode. It’s enjoyable and one you can nod your head to in time. Map of the Problematique does build and build but it never quite reaches that crescendo. Like I said, it seems ready to explode, but never quite does, instead it seems like it’s building up for something but isn’t quite sure. Nevertheless, a nice track.

Soldiers Poem is perhaps the stand out track, in that it’s the least produced track on the album. It opens with a guitar that sounds awfully similar to the guitar opening of REM’s Everybody Hurts. No harm in it, but it’s a forgettable track in that it does quite ignite any fires or leave an impression. It does show another side to Muse, however.

Invincible sounds like it’s taken over the Soldiers Poem in so far as the sounds of marching drums. It does bore to be honest, and I didn’t like the track very much. There’s the usual moaning and whining on the track, which doesn’t make for good music to be honest. Pity.

Assassin is the rockiest track on the album so far, a good track that offers some cool vibes. Sure it’s far from being original, but sometimes doing something familiar and doing it well is better than doing something new and doing it badly. An entertaining track, and back to good old Muse.

Yet another track that sounds like it could be off any of the Muse albums, in particular Absolution, and continues the music we’re familiar with over three albums ago. I like it, but I don’t know why. All the tracks are starting to sound similiar either to each other, or to previous albums. Surely there’s an ounce of originality in the album. Let’s look further than Exopolitics.

Coming to the end of the album we have penultimate tracks City of Delusion and Hoodoo. The latter track is a melodramatic piece, which reminded me a little of The Dresden Dolls, but only in the theatrical sense that the track provides. It’s okay I guess, but it’s still unoriginal. The former is really not worth much saying about, it’s another familiar common track.

The final track, Knights of Cydonia, is the longest track at over six minutes long. What you get for those six minutes is a track that actually feels like it’s been completed and has tones of heavy metal tracks in that it has a epic build up and then goes into that crescendo we’ve been waiting for throughout the album. It’s a loud, feisty and punchy track and one that ends the album with great delight.

Overall, Muse’s fourth album is hardly distinguishable from the first, second or third album. Absolution has been their best effort to date, with Black Holes and Revelations sitting uncomfortably between the first and second album as the sibling no one’s really sure about. He shows bottle, but he’s mostly a wet lettuce and is really quite harmless.

It’s a real disappointment as I expected myself to find Muse having grown as a band, and perhaps thought about innovating or reinventing themselves. I don’t see this as a band that will remain together for very long, nor will they reach out to a wider demographic if they continue to churn out the same old songs, but with a different opening, or the same old lyrics, or the same old familiarity. Familiarity, as they say, breeds contempt. Contempt is what I feel for Muse with Black Holes and Revelations. It’s just so underwhelming, and wholly unoriginal. A shame.

Verdict: Disappointing, average fourth album from the indie rockers.

Track listing:
1. Take A Bow
2. Starlight
3. Supermassive Black Hole
4. Map Of The Problematique
5. Soldier’s Poem
6. Invincible
7. Assassin
8. Exopolitics
9. City Of Delusion
10. Hoodoo
11. Knights Of Cydonia