I was going to start out this review by drawing a comparison between Radiohead and Muse, but Craig has threatened to hit me over the head with a tire iron if I do that. Therefore, I'm instead going to start by stating that this record is, like most Radiohead releases, pretentious in the extreme, full of cryptic lyrics and paranoia, and almost seems to be deliberately trying to alienate you. But they're definitely not like Radiohead, not one iota.

Unfortunately, "Absolution" is different from that other album released at roughly the same time by a band that probably isn't Radiohead. While that album was charming and listenable despite its air pretentiousness and exclusivity, "Absolution" is a frustrating listen because of it. This might be due to the fact that Muse apparently don't know the meaning of subtlety, while the musician who might be Thom Yorke but probably isn't is a master of crafting subtle nuances in music, Muse blunder along with all the restraint of a right-wing radio talk show host. While this directness is appealing in many ways, it doesn't take long to move from being appealing to being annoying. To be precise, it takes two songs to become irritating.

After a brief opening track, the first song, Apocalypse Please, opens up with a crashing piano line, and some typical lyrics from Matthew Bellamy about god-knows-what. It sounds like he's prophesising the end of the world, and not just because the song chorus is "This is the end, this is the end of the world!". The music is dense, heavy, and incredibly direct. Don't bother looking for subtext here, just let the music bowl you over. The next track, Time Is Running Out is less a song than a collection of hooks. Starting out with a fuzzy bassline, it moves from chorus to chorus without ever going through any intermediate stages. It's unsubtle, tactless, and yet somehow a decent enough song.

At this point though, you start to yearn for something a bit more conceptually complicated, something with a bit more substance. Unfortunately, Muse fail to deliver. Sing For Absolution, for instance, is a five-minute borefest that only manages to directly convey the ideals of tedium and dreariness. Stockholm Syndrome is a rocker with nothing much to recommend it at all. Hysteria is built around a riff that sounds like the riff that Stockholm Syndrome is built around, but played a bit slower. Butterflies and Hurricanes might be a song with a decent title, but that's about all that's decent about it. Endlessly is so pompous and over-dramatic that makes you wonder if these three would be better suited to a career in the theatre, instead of in rock music.

In closing, it doesn't look like I'll have to make a comparison to Radiohead after all. Radiohead are intricate, subtle, and delicate with their music. Muse on the other hand, are direct, clumsy, and overly fond of musical theatrics. I don't know about anyone else, but I like my music to be filled with emotion and depth, not melodrama.