AFTER the fairly conventional - if precociously talented - Radiohead-inspired debut album, Showbiz, Muse headed straight off the planet with the frankly ridiculous prog rock hysterics of its follow-up, Origin Of Symmetry.
Album number three, Absolution, has not reined in rock prodigy Matt Bellamy's ambitions - but this time, that's not such a bad thing. There are still grandiose moments when the virtuoso singer, guitarist and pianist sounds like the mad child-genius offspring of Freddie Mercury, Eddie Van Halen and Liberace.
But, now, rather than hiding a lack of substance, the flash and melodrama serves to hammer home impressive songs such as Time Is Running Out and Stockholm Syndrome, and underlines what a remarkable band the young three-piece are.
Paranoid science-fiction visions of the end of the world are Absolution's driving obsession - opener Apocalypse Please setting the tone - while the band's raw, hyperventilating energy and inventiveness finally blasts their many copyists and detractors out of the water. World domination may well await.
Updated: 08:50 Thursday, September 25, 2003
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