Despite picking up an open-goal ‘concept’, Muse pass the ball backwards, before Matt Bellamy volleys it into his own net and does an extended air guitar celebration. I try not to be blunt in my criticism, but I have absolutely no reservations about calling this album stupid. WOTP reduces political fights to rudimentary, vapid musings and then has the gall to pointlessly screech them. ‘Irony’ fails to excuse the smarmy, detached joy Muse take in telling us just how fucked we are. Dystopia is entering its kitsch phase, but no world could be as scary as the one where this is the limit of our political or musical thought.
4/30
A favourite: ‘Kill or Be Killed’
‘Will of the People’ is out now via Warner Music.
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