Rolling Stone Takes a Deep Look at Muse’s Drones Album
So what can we expect from Muse’s seventh studio album? Rolling Stone went looking for answers.
Muse spent the past few years pushing the sonic boundaries of rock & roll, creating increasingly bombastic music that utilized symphonies, choirs, synthesizers and, in the case of 2012’s The 2nd Law, Skrillex-inspired dubstep sounds. But when they began plotting out Drones, their politically-charged seventh album inspired by the expanded use of drone warfare across the globe, the trio decided it was time to radically strip things down. “Our intention was to go back to how we made music in the early stages of our career,” says Muse frontman Matt Bellamy, “when we were more like a standard three-piece rock band with guitar, bass and drums.”
Bellamy says he’s immensely proud of Muse’s last three albums, but things were just getting a little out of hand. “We probably spent more time in the control room, fiddling with knobs and synths and computers and drum machines than actually playing together as a band,” he says. “As I look back at the last three albums, each one had progressively less and less songs that we could play live.”
