Last week there was slight panic as the Ricoh Arena appeared to be on fire. Turned out it was, in fact, just Muse ‘warming up’ for their UK stadium gigs. Of course, hearing all these things and seeing the photos you could only wonder what the band had in store for their shows and on Saturday at The Emirates Stadium, it was 7Bit’s chance to find out exactly how Muse could set their show alight.
The opening acts had proved to be a bone of contention leading up to the UK tour—with many people, including myself, baffled as to who thought it was a good idea to have Bastille and Dizzee Rascal supporting. Turned out that indeed people were right to worry as, quite frankly, they both flat. Despite both acts being decent enough in their own right, there was only so much they could do to engage a crowd that was both disinterested in both their performance and sound. Bastille seemingly suffered less in terms of sound suitability with their electro-indie set; but their lack of crowd engagement and stage presence definitely highlighted their inexperience as did their seeming weakening towards the end of the set. On the other hand, Dizzee Rascal found himself with the complete opposite dilemma—with a performance full of energy and plenty of crowd interaction but with a setlist that was so ill-suited for the audience he faced.
Beginning the set with the ominous opening verse of ‘The 2nd Law: Unsustainable’; it quickly became apparent what sort of evening the crowd were in for from Devonshire trio Muse. Grandiose and erring a little on the side of ridiculous, Muse themselves made quite the fiery entrance before barrelling into ‘Supremacy’. With a dominating bass-line it sounded edgier and rockier than its’ recorded counterpart whilst Matt Bellamy got to flex his vocals to their insane falsetto best.
The unmistakable intro of ‘Supermassive Black Hole’ got two airings in quick succession as Matt Bellamy proved that, despite rumours to the contrary, he is human and capable of making mistakes. Of course two attempts of the opening meant that the crowd was already on the verge of frantic and so it received one of the most enthusiastic responses from the crowd. Sliding straight from the least serious song on Black Holes and Revelations and then in to arguably the least serious song on The 2nd Law, ‘Panic Station’ had a rather odd effect—though the light-heartedness remained, the energy from the crowd dropped as ‘Panic Station’ veered more towards a groove than rock. Admittedly you can’t complain too much when the video accompaniments were animations of the world leaders dancing which was entertaining if not a little ham-fisted way of showing their anti-government views.
Unfortunately for Muse despite their theatrics, there was no escaping the very obvious divide in their setlist. The 2nd Law, even live, lacked the same musical impact as previous albums (including The Resistance) and lead to some real lulls in their setlist. ‘Animals’ was met with a static crowd and was only kept interesting by trying to figure out where their ‘fat-cat’ business man was in the stadium followed by his suicide and successive explosion of ‘Musos’ (Muse branded money) into the audience. To follow this up with ‘Knights of Cydonia’ just went to reinforce the point further as it didn’t even seem like the same band.
‘Dead Star’ made for a rare treat that showcased Muse at some of their rockiest best. Here it wasn’t about the graphics or the pyrotechnics—the performance very much was reliant on the band themselves and they certainly showed why they have ascended to the 60,000 people heights. Guitars shredding and wailing accompanied by a shuddering bass-line and thundering, dominating drums this had to be one of the set highlights for me—proving that sometimes simple is best.
It also has to be said that despite the growing audience numbers Muse know how to interact with and include every last member. From the visual explosion that dominated proceedings in their nuclear reactor stage setup (no joke), to the catwalk and B-stage usage right down to a new to The 2nd Law era, Bellamy actually approaching fans on the barrier; they made the show accessible to everyone. It takes a certain kind of band to retain such performance skills on such a huge scale and yet still make every member in the crowd feel like an integral part to the show.
Speaking of the B-stage, this was the point in which Muse showed their far more tender side. Playing the truly beautiful ‘Blackout’ the moment was made even more spectacular with the addition of a lightbulb with a trapeze artist floating over the audience. It’s just a shame that such a beautiful and emotive moment had to be dampened by the saccharine damp-squib of The Resistance’s ‘Guiding Light’.
After an hour and a half, you would’ve been forgiven for thinking that as Muse departed from the stage that would be it. But instead ‘The 2nd Law: Unsustainable’ landed and Muse upped their brand of slightly insane, slightly silly but awesome showmanship to the next level as a giant robot paraded the stage (the robot was called Charles in case you were wondering). Following that ‘Plug In Baby’ turned the crowd into a number of circle pits, moshes and it was pretty difficult to not want to join in.
Of course not happy with 1 encore, Muse opted for a second, still performing two hours later with the same level of energy and precision as the first tracks. ‘Uprising’ lead to a hive-mind amongst the audience of chanting and following Bellamy’s every command; at that point he very well could’ve asked the crowd to bring down the government and they probably would—such was the power of the moment. There obviously was a clanger when it came to choosing the closing song as ‘Starlight’ just felt odd and misplaced—not quite bringing the evening to a natural close.
When it comes to Muse, every time you see them it does stun you into submission that yes, actually, they’re exceedingly good at what they do. But therein lays the problem: although they put on one hell of a show both visually and sonically, they still have yet to master the art of setlist construction allowing for lulls and weaker material to slip through the net. They’re so close to being out of this world, if only they could get over the take-off problems.
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