All the Muse that's fit to print

In 2006, the world learned to stop laughing at Muse. Pilloried for most of their career as Radiohead clones whose humour chips had been extracted at birth, the English neo-proggers have, over the past 12 months, enjoyed a critical and commercial second coming (we shouldn’t exaggerate of course: Muse have long been a massive cult act).

What’s more, they’ve done so without compromising their bonkers avant-rock in the slightest. True, the single ‘Supermassive Black Hole’ got its funk on to a quite silly degree, but the rest of the multi-platinum LP Black Holes And Revelations – an album that vaulted to the top of the Irish charts and refused to budge for the best part of a month – saw the band pursuing a business-as-usual strategy: frontman Matt Bellamy’s set-phasers-to-kill guitars were present and correct; there were oodles of faux-classical arrangements and songs about time-travelling knights.
Thrust blinking into the limelight, many conscientious musicians might seek to take advantage of their hard won prominence by lecturing the world about African poverty or global warming. Muse, though, have more important issues on their mind.
“If you look at the footage of September 11, it’s quite obvious that the towers have been brought down in a controlled explosion,” explains Dominic ‘Dom’ Howard, the band’s drummer. “When the towers collapsed it gave governments the excuse they needed to ramp up surveillance on their citizens. Look at the degree of surveillance in the United States and the UK at the moment: they would never have gotten away with that before 9/11.”
Still, Muse aren’t incorrigible conspiracy cranks. Certain theories stretch even their credulity to snapping point.
“You’ve got to be careful how far you go because suddenly you can find yourself in the position of David Icke, going on about lizards controlling the earth,” says Howard. “Which is ridiculous, obviously.”
On the subject of conspiracies, Muse fans are reading all sort of hidden meanings into the sleeve of Black Holes And Revelations. Created by Storm Thorgerson, the graphic artist responsible for Pink Floyd’s '70s album shots, the cover depicts the band’s four members sitting around a table upon which tiny horses are dallying.
“Well, the horses represent the horsemen of the apocalypse,” explains Howard. “And we’re wearing suits that depict various human vices: narcissism, intolerance, greed and so on. There’s more, but you’ll have to work it out for yourself!”
The greater part of Black Holes And Revelations was recorded in rural France, where Muse spent six months in sanity-testing solitude.
“You need to be somewhere where you go slightly mad, because that’s how you get into the mental space that lets you produce your best art,” says Howard. Actually, Muse are rather fond of rural bliss, having assembled most of 2003’s Absolution at Grouse Lodge, Westmeath (the residential complex where, if red top rumour is to be believed, Michael Jackson is currently plotting a comeback). “Grouse Lodge is fantastic, because you’ve got plenty of peace and quiet and it’s also extremely luxurious,” Howard enthuses. “It’s just a great place to hang out, which is something all artists appreciate.”