Muse’s third album was released in the midst of internal and external turmoil, and it shows. The conspiracy theory-incubating horrors of 9/11 coincided with the band being dumped by US label Maverick. The album that emerged, Absolution, swung between liberation, paranoia and tinfoil-hatted delirium.
Where its predecessor, Origin Of Symmetry, had ramped up the ambition and guitar heroics in the wake of whey-faced debut album Showbiz, Absolution strapped everything to a rocket and blasted it all off into space. Yet epic tunes such as Stockholm Syndrome, the dizzying Hysteria and the high-kicking Time Is Running Out are still underpinned with an existential dread that was all too earthbound.
Absolution is epic in every respect except length. The longest track here is Butterflies And Hurricanes, five minutes of crashing piano chords and spiralling riffs. But what tense, nervous ballad Sing For Absolution and pocket-rocket The Small Print lack in duration, they make up for in grandeur.
If only the same thing could be said for the deluxe version of this 20th-anniversary reissue. While the packaging is impressive – three silver vinyl LPs and a couple of CDs housed in an embossed box with a 40-page book – the musical contents are less essential.
The original album is accompanied by a measly 11-track bonus disc featuring a mish-mash of early versions and less-than-stellar live tracks
The original album is accompanied by a measly 11-track bonus disc featuring a mish-mash of early versions and less-than-stellar live tracks. Devotees may be happy with a piano/vocal take on Apocalypse Please or a live rendition of Endlessly, but it doesn’t add much to the myth of an album that deserves mythologising (the fact that the music is duplicated across the CDs and vinyl LPs doesn’t help).
Of more interest is writer Mark Beaumont’s in-depth essay in the hardback book, not least for Matt Bellamy’s confession that “I lost my mind” in a conspiracy theory rabbit hole. Whether that makes it worth throwing down upwards of £100 for the whole thing is between Muse die-hards and their bank managers.
Absolution - XX Anniversary Edition is on sale now via Warners.
