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 It’s brave for an established band to speak out against the government and some pretty powerful people. But at their recent headlining show at Reading Muse did just that- albeit in their own subtle way.
Wearing a shirt with the words ‘Terror Storm’ scrawled on it, lead singer Matt Bellamy simply advised their audience to type those words into a search engine, and watch the video that came up.
It transpires that Terror Storm is a controversial documentary which raised some eye opening questions about the terrorist 9/11 attack on the World Trade Centre, and the one in London last July.
“It was just a program Matt watched. He showed it to me and it was a very interesting program,” bassist Chris Wolstenholme explains. “Things have changed in the last four years and a lot people don’t believe what the government is trying to say. There’s a lot of things that just quite don’t add up. If you watch the Terror Storm program, there’s a lot in there that just does not make sense and I think more people than ever know that. We’re creating this whole vibe of, you have people who run the world and there’s people who obviously live in the world, and there’s a big divide where there wasn’t”.
Muse have never shied from being controversial but Chris doesn’t want the band to be seen to a political band. “I don’t think we are preachy because even though some of the influences on the songs are political, I don’t think there’s any references to anything and there’s certainly not references to people or places. So for that reason, there’s still an element of the lyrics that are left open. On songs like Take A Bow, it’s obvious what the lyrical influences are, but at the same time, there’s no names and no places, so it could be related to a whole bunch of things,” he insists. ”When you do genuinely start getting political it’s a dodgy area to get into. I think there have been a lot of people who have been getting too political without being qualified”.
Their headlining Reading and Leeds festival appearance is just the pinnacle of what must be an exciting time in Muse's career. Their new album Black Holes And Revelations is loved and lauded by critics, and has earned them a Mercury Music Prize nomination. So do they feel like they’re finally getting their dues?
“I don’t think any one expects it or I don’t think we feel like “oh we deserve it”. The satisfaction you get from music is from the creative side of it. It’s nice when people turn round and say they like the album, but I don’t think anyone should ever take it for granted,” reckons Chris. “It’s nice to get good reviews, but it’s not something we think about too much. In the past our album reviews have always been quite mixed, people either absolutely love it or hate it. It’s the old marmite syndrome I guess”.
Being a band of many influences, it’s not surprising that Black Holes and Revelations has different musical strains running through it. This time they claim to be inspired by any thing from the New York dance scene to Italian folk music. However, as Chris explains, that there was never any grand scheme for album number four.
“It was fairly loose to start with. We didn’t really have any particular directional goal that we thought we should go in. We just basically had a number of ideas then went into the studio and starting working on them really,” recalls Chris. “We knew we needed to do something different from Absolution. Absolution was an album that was quite themed and dark and I think we needed to get away from that”.
You couldn’t’ get further away from ‘old Muse’ than the Prince-esque disco funk of Supermassive Black Hole, which is why they’re unrepentant about it being their first single in two years even though it's a song that has divided fans. As Chris points out: “It was always designed to shock people. We listened to a lot of the previous singles and they all seemed to be in a similar area. We felt we’ve kind of done all that, so this time round we thought 'let’s release something that is so different from anything we’ve done before'" .
The recording process saw the band move to various parts of the world starting with the main writing sessions in France, where they basically locked themselves in the studio for eight weeks. Cabin fever sunk in and the band decamped to the faster paced chaos of New York.
“We decided to go to New York because it was the absolute opposite to where we’d been. Basically when we went there, we weren’t living in the studio. We were living in hotels and the hours that we worked were more regimented. We were going in at twelve and finishing at midnight and maybe going out for the evening,” recalls Chris. “I don’t how, but maybe just the fact that it was regimented just kind of seemed to speed up the process a bit. When we were in France, we worked at our own hours, and because we were sort of in the studio the whole time, sometimes you just wake up have a big breakfast and we’d go in and see what happens”.
It's been eight years since that they burst onto the scene with their self titled EP, so what valuable life lessons have they learn since then?
“Not to play football on concrete”, laughs Chris.
We'll take his word for it ....
Here's the video to their new single, Starlight, which is out on 4th September.
For more info: www.muse.mu
Words: Helen Duong
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MUSE ARE AMAZING!!!! love them sooo much went seein them on saturday and they were amazing best performance ive seen 
