Was just… not very good.

I always thought they should make a whole album of songs like “Butterflies and Hurricanes”, the perfect blend of orchestral instrumentation, virtuosity, and rock. Musically that’s exactly what they tried to do here, and it pretty much fell flat. Whereas the song I mentioned earlier was a perfect blends, with all elements present at all times at various levels (or deliberate in their absence), this one had awkward transitions between “rock parts” and “symphonic parts”. No good. Not only that, but all the vaguely instrumental/symphonic bits were all very simplistic, just highlighting the “Muse scale” - a mode that is present in all of their albums to some extent.

Sonically, the album is compressed as all fuck and I can’t hear any of the instrumental textures. The drums can’t breathe and the vocals clip like crazy. The bass drum sounds more like me kicking an empty filing cabinet. I know it’s not just the CD master, either, because I have an older Muse album on vinyl and it has similar problems (though not as severe).

I have reserved a separate paragraph to complain about the last three tracks of the album, which supposedly comprise the “Exogenesis Symphony”. I feel like a little more attention was paid to not completely crushing the textural life out of the sound when these were recorded, but unfortunately they have another glaring weakness. The composition just isn’t very interesting. It’s basic, it’s pedestrian. I have the same complaints about it that my former choir teacher did about the score for the new Star Trek movie - “I could have written that.”

Don’t whip out an orchestra just because you have the budget. Save it for when you have the skills.