MUSE - The Wow! Signal

There's nothing new on the tenth album by Muse, nothing to leave us breathless or knock us off our chairs: sonic maximalism propped up by choirs and orchestra, acrobatic guitars, hyper-kitsch grandeur, technical flourishes that occasionally border on exasperating, a few pleasant electro detours that always last too little. All very comforting for fans who love their trademark sound, less so for anyone who struggles with the taste for gigantism and self-reference typical of Matt Bellamy and co.

From the opening "The Dark Forest" onwards, you're hit with the conception of a full-blown blockbuster that will accompany the listener for the next forty-five minutes. "The Wow! Signal" carries the anguish of the end of Bellamy's marriage to model and actress Elle Evans (the two have two children together), rendered through a cosmic parallel: human loneliness likened to the loneliness of a lost planet or a meteorite drifting without momentum through outer space.
The most successful moments on "The Wow! Signal", or at least the most immediate and recognisable, turn out to be "Cryogen", a direct descendant of "Plug In Baby", one of the tracks most beloved by their fans, and "Unravelling", already released as a single back in June of last year — two decidedly successful episodes, though they tend to resemble various other songs the band has already recorded in the past.

Amid tracks that start off melancholically intimate before rippling outward as they go ("Shimmering Scars", "Be With You"), the never-quelled magniloquent passion for prog structures ("Hexagons"), a few dance-funk-oriented detours ("Nightshift Superstar"), riffs and falsettos spilling into power-pop choruses ("The Sickness In You & I"), even a negligible featured guest (Ellie Goulding on "Hush"), "The Wow! Signal" comes across as an enjoyable record that will surely find its true fulfilment on stage. But when we first heard "Showbiz" or "Origin Of Symmetry", we imagined a very different future for Muse.

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29/06/2026