1.5/5 stars
Muse have just scored a hat-trick of own goals. It began in 2009 with the release of The Resistance, when the Englishmen’s arena status truly began to get to their collective heads, resulting in a bloated, tacky album.
It managed to get even worse with 2012’s The 2nd Law, replete with embarrassing dubstep breakdowns and hackneyed political commentary over some of the band’s most lifeless and meagre musical efforts to date.
From all reports, Drones was going to be the album to break the cycle, by a band looking to become a band again, for lack of a better term. Disappointingly, it’s merely reinforced said cycle in a manner that can only be described as vicious.
This is an album that is, at its core, an exercise in self-sabotage. When they get a big, chunky riff going on ‘Psycho’, they ruin the moment with atrocious lyrics (“Your arse belongs to me now”) and dialogue from a generic drill sergeant. ‘Defector’, meanwhile, shows signs of life with a mammoth Zeppelin groove before being buried in robot voices and shrill falsetto.
Already on the verge of becoming self-parody, Drones sends Muse well beyond the point of salvation. A massive let-down.
Drones by MUSE is out through Warner Music.
