MADNESS

Muse are my second favourite band of all time, and my favourite listed on the archives. The Resistance was a completely stunning album. In every way. But half way through that album, they decided to stop being Muse and start being Queen.

This song isn't a BAD song, but it's just mediocre. I'm sure it will get them somewhere commercially, but for a band that pulled out stunners like New Born and Unnatural Selection, it's a bit weak.

Even the synthpop song from The Resistance, "Undisclosed Desires" had a catchy melody to push it along.

3 average or below average songs from the 2nd Law out. Muse have 9 songs left to impress me.

It's buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-bad-bad-bad.

When I first heard "Unsustainable"- the first track dropped from this new Muse album- I was shocked. Not because I had finally stumbled upon the progressive-black-jazz-neofolk-metal record I had been searching for my entire life, but because a progressive rock band that had once been decent some short years ago was now a poster child for mainstream, corporate garbage of the unforgivable variety. Luckily, the first true single for this album, "Madness", is not quite as bad as my first impression with "The 2nd Law". Unfortunately, most of the things that go right with "Madness" are thanks to Muse's shameless plagiarism of the almighty Queen. I could call this listenable, but if this is the best thing that this Muse album has to offer, then I shall schedule post-traumatic stress therapy in advance.

Queen's "I Want to Break Free" was a decent song- not one of their best, but pretty good. It had a cheesy-yet-endearing 80's beat, great vocals from Mercury, and a generally catchy feel that makes it memorable, even though I haven't heard the song in some time. It feels like no coincidence, then, that "I Want to Break Free" is the first thing that pops into my head when hearing "Madness". I will refrain from attributing this revelation to handy detective work- Muse have virtually ripped off everything that was decent about the original song, and infused it into their mainstream, now slightly dubstep-influenced sound. The chord progression, the melodies, and even the shape of the guitar solo towards the end point out Muse as hacks. Queen has always been an influence on Muse, but- intentional or accidental- it's pretty lame that they would have gone this far with it.

Like I said, "Madness" is listenable, but I suspect that it is so largely because of the plagiarism. The last minute begins to hint at some interesting vocal arrangements, but for my money, this is a fairly sappy pop tune. Even so, I still get the haunting feeling that I'll be calling this one of the album's highlights when the fateful time comes.

I predict that the fans of old prog metal Muse will have mixed feeling about this song just like Queen's 70's fans disliked Queen's early 80's output, but i personally, don't care.. I never had problems with Queen (or any other prog band for that matter ) going 'pop', as long as the music was still memorable and creative in one way or another (i'm not one of those people who say that pop is bad by default; pop music can also be good!). One would say that it's simply 'jumping on a bandwagon' and trying to suit mass tastes, but very few notice, that such moves bring risk of losing some of the most tradiionally oriented fanbase.. And, if a band manages to successfully transition itself from a prog/metal band to a pop band, or well, at least a DIFFERENT band (because i'm still far from saying that Muse went POP), it also deserves some respect, and in many cases, MORE respect then just playing the same kind of stuff all over again for decades...

I highly doubt that any proghead needs to have this song in his collection, nevertheless it's still a cool, fun song, and i will stick to that. Everywhere else, 4 stars, here, unfortunately, only 3...