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Muse have transformed from a screaming-guitar force of nature with a dash of beautiful piano in their first albums Showbiz and the modern classic Origin Of Symmetry to escalate into epic bravado in Absolution and the quintessential Black Holes & Revelations. Yet, with the latter of these releases, there have been a few worrying signs, especially in the catastrophic single ‘Invincible’. Despite the weird Hawaiian influence, this song floored me with its nauseatingly sentimental hope expressed in its music and lyrics such as “there’s no one like you in the universe”.

I was seriously hoping their new album The Resistance would shrug off this pretentious little error. I was disappointed. From the track ‘Resistance’ you get the sense that despite the off-beat style it’s far too predictable. The rock opera aesthetic present is going to continue to kill this album. Although a seemingly horrible comparison to make, Muse seems to be turning into a Queen-like entity. Some may baulk and say there is nothing wrong with this. May I make one thing clear? This is a new millennium, gone is the sense of pomp and circumstance which made British rock shiny and glamorous. In 2001, the blistering sense of chaos and uncontrollability in Origin of Symmetry allowed the behemoth of feedback to appear in mainstream British music.

Alas, track four, the ridiculously titled track ‘United States of Eurasia’, heralds the worst of what’s to come. Even the pioneers of self-indulgent progressive rock The Mars Volta would grow tired with this piece. Muse may be influenced by Queen, by all means this is a given – but I wouldn’t expect reproductions of Beatles music by say Oasis… (oh, wait.) I mean, great, make a Queen homage and stick it on a tribute album, but don’t treat it as serious music on your latest album and risk losing the fans who loved your feedback and biting lyrics. C’mon Muse, please inject your originality back into our lives and stop killing us with your aspirations for the West End. If Matt Bellamy really wanted to be the next Freddie Mercury, he should be replacing Adam Lambert as the next front man of Queen, not giving us this drivel. As for tacking Chopin onto the end of the piece, well, my respect for your musical genius makes me want to simultaneously applaud your classical knowledge in the face of bafflingly unaware new talent and boo you off for inflating your ego to invincible proportions.

Besides this monstrosity however, there are some great highlights. The fresh sounding ‘Undisclosed Desires’ and the incredible hard rock track ‘Unnatural Selection’ (which is definitely the best song on the album) are great stomping grounds for the fantastic work of Chris Wolstenhome tying in some industrial-sized bass riffs and excellent drumwork provided by Dominic Howard give some relief in comparison to the further horrors like the Lloyd-Webberian ‘Guiding Light’ and the similarly sickening Kaiser Chiefs inspired ‘I Belong to You’. However along with the single ‘Uprising’, another great point of the album is the ‘Exogenesis’, which deserves an album review all of its own.

This three-part track begins with a great pulsing beat accompanied by a 40-piece orchestra leading into a great juxtaposition of rock band and symphony, the combination of which kicks the crap out of Metallica or Queen, with the diverse styles working against each other, instead of together. The melding of epic beat, orchestra and Bellamy’s voice is incredible. His vocals reach the incredible and brilliant falsetto with such grace – but more like an opera singer than the emotion-laden voice of Jeff Buckley. It creates an open-ended idea with such originality it almost makes you forget the mistakes of the earlier songs. I’m sure many Muse fans will appreciate the solo efforts of front man Matt Bellamy’s singing with piano, as the simple combination is stunning.

Although this album does display Muse’s fascinating originality, it also mixes in vile faux-revolutionary songs that unfortunately do follow from ‘Invincible’. Nowhere can I see this mutated track listing being referred to as a ‘concept album’, so I won’t judge it as one, and it has no excuse for being like a musical’s soundtrack anyway. The idea that Muse are a progressive rock act is true, but they were uniquely progressive in their work – and now that work has turned into homogenised mush.