My gentle stroll down my facebook news feed during my lunch break on Wednesday last week was rudely interrupted by a series of really quite repetitive posts from really quite irritated ‘music lovers’. You see apparently Muse had just released their ‘album trailer’ for the forthcoming release of their SIXTH studio album, ‘The 2nd Law’, out this September. It’s fair to say that even the most ardent Bellamy enthusiasts appeared at the end of their tether with the release of what really is a crazy, crazy couple of minutes caught on camera. People said such things as ‘Hopefully a joke’, ‘This is a joke’, ‘But Matt, I wasn’t aware you were such a comedian’, ‘this guy’s a n00b’, ‘Can’t wait to see these guys live!’ and ‘Dont give a shit if it’s dubstep or not, it’s Muse, it’ll probably be good.’ Enlightening, no?
Well, let’s first of all try to put aside the ridiculous and unfortunately all too emerging trend of mega band’s using cinematic ‘album trailers’ to promote their releases, drawing on the combined vermin of record label bosses, hedonistic PR chiefs as well as overpaid ‘creative directors’ all pooled into two minutes of pure media evil, designed to lure young impressionable teens with their spell-binding powers of cinematic grandiose meaningless hyperbole.
The video begins with a frenetic fiddle of violins and then trees, yes lots of trees, dark trees at that. Amongst these trees there emerge swaths of psychedelic shadows, I’m scared, are you scared? I think I just saw someone run past, okay I’m definitely on edge here guys, what is this? I don’t know, my only bet is to just keep watching. I can feel the suspense ripping through me. Twenty seconds in and the logo flashes before me, oh thank God, it’s just another Muse video.
Okay there are now two people running together, they’re both running from danger, does that mean I’m in danger too? But what are they running from? I don’t mean to alarm anyone, but I think we might be dealing with a troublesome metaphor here. And in a flash, we’re out of the forest, thank heavens. We are now in an urban setting, the forest chase has become a gritty inner city drama. But people are still running, tireless running at that, it’s like the relentless pursuit of the city dramatised in a short video for us. It’s like life’s a treadmill, man. No?
An eye flashes before us now, with the sort of majestic lure of it being transfixed with intent but yet terrified with fear at the same time, in a sort of… superhuman trance? Oh god what does this all mean? There are now infinite amounts of digits in front of the eye, it’s like the coding is mingling with us, it’s unsettling us I’d say. It’s not natural that’s for sure. These frightening digits now morph into the rise and fall of stock shares. This is now accompanied by images of oil fields. Machines at work. The stock market is now alive before us. But I don’t understand Matt, what does the every-day working life of our busy, hard-working stock market economists have to do with forests, and eyes of harrowing fear? Chinese economists now? It gets even worse, dressed in red, duh, because they’re communist, communist capitalist market traders, obviously.
There’s now fire, which means that everything is definitely not how it ought to be.
The rising price of petrol flashes before us. Yeah Matt, I feel your pain. Petrol is expensive these days. Thank God someone’s made a record we can all relate to.
The economists now look a lot more angry than before. This is making me feel nearly as on edge as I felt in the forest earlier. Racially diverse economists at least though, if nothing else. I’d like to point out at this point, that we are not even halfway through the fucking video.
Oh dear, that eye is back, it looks awfully surreal, with its blue stare, no one stares like that Matt, do your research.
Oh well thank God someone’s put the news on, this will explain it. I wish the signal would stop cutting out, I can’t hear what she’s saying, it’s as if my perception of reality has become crucially distorted by the technology I choose to consume the modern world with. That or I need to reset my digibox.
The explanation she gives of why we ought to be so bloody worried as to run through forests and down urban highways, is because we’re running out of energy. The actual scientific explanation of this is vague at best, let’s be honest Matt.
‘An economy based on endless growth is unsustainable.’
Cue cinematic dubstep euphoria. Oh, look whose turned up, it’s that band, Muse? They’re playing an arena show, I’m glad someone’s enjoying this, along with the talking television set.
However, this does little to calm down the men who are still running. The camera takes on the perspective of the machine chasing the men through the suburban streets, in between shots of the evil dancing television set.
And then it ends, and apparently after all this, Muse have a new album out.
The main criticism that has been targeted at Muse for this video is the use of dubstep, trying to cross genre their own mass market appeal into another to form a super-mass of young music lovers. Innovative I’d say, I like Muse, I like dubstep, ‘OH MY GOD, WHAT IS THIS?!’ Everyone’s a winner, more is more right? I mean I actually quite enjoyed that video, and if you’re going to create some mindless ‘armageddon’ style narrative (because they haven’t done that for about three albums straight now?) and loosely and rather lazily connect it to some sort of political undertone to make it ‘powerful and pertinent’ with the youth, then at least go whole hog and throw in some dubstep.
Well done I’d say, thumbs up. Anyway lunch is well and truly over, meaning myself, and all the terrifying economists must get back to work now, enjoy your day, and don’t go near any forests for christ’s sake.
