Muse – ‘The Wow! Signal’ album review: Does the signal provide help?
When something feels binary in its qualities, it’s all too easy to adopt the Marmite metaphor: “This band are like Marmite, you either love them or hate them.” It’s a marketing method that’s worked for Marmite, who’ve adopted a legion of die-hard fans willing to die on a hill that seems utterly bizarre to other people. Very similar to Muse, really.
The Skinny: In keeping with the binary nature of this band, I’ll address what seems to be the reasons behind the adoration. I wholeheartedly respect their sense of self, it takes resilience to be so brazenly bombastic in your craft, which Muse are with their highly saturated production styles and overly zealous penchant for creative dystopia. Despite the obviously jarring nature of it all, they’ve doubled down in their career and continuously made music that feels right for them.
But somewhere down the line, an echo chamber formed. In the reverberated walls of their studios, which rang with overly fuzzy guitar lines, they seemed to lose sight of any objectivity. Any idea seemingly became a good idea, sonically and lyrically, with the latter seeing the band fall further and further into a pit of their own self-importance. But as I said, die-hard fans lapped it up.
Which they will no doubt do with this latest album, The Wow! Signal. Opening track ‘The Dark Forest’ feels like classic Muse, plunging into a haunted abyss of their own metal-tinged sound. But Matt Bellamy’s voice feels more jarring on it than ever, which only worsens with follow-up ‘Nightshift Superstar’. A genuinely brilliant bass line roots this foray into techno, which delivers a sumptuous groove, only to be ruined by a truly crap vocal hook and misguided reprise.
Juxtaposing arrangements have always been the key to experimentation, and I’m not opposed to the idea of the softly spoken ballad transcending into a thrashing smash. But ‘Shimmering Stars’ isn’t nimble enough to pivot in the way it tries, and once again, the jarring Muse genre shifts let ideas get stuck in the mud.
I don’t want to dock marks for ambition, though. There are clearly spades of that on this record, paired with genuinely brilliant playing that is faultless in its performances. Particularly for parts that are wildly intricate despite the chaos they individually find themselves in. See ‘Hexagons’ for example, a song that’s drum beats would take centre stage if it wasn’t for the riffs on display. And then there’s ‘Hush’, which again has a demonic riff that would rival any great rock song, and could have been the blueprint for the lesser tracks on the album to follow.
But ten albums in, ambition isn’t what we are after from Muse. In fact, we are tired of this relentless pursuit of it that just comes in the shape of misguided arrangements and self-aggrandising vocal performances. Refinement would be the great next step for Muse, who don’t yet seem to understand the art of not throwing everything at a wall because we now know that most of it doesn’t stick.
Standout Track: ‘Nightshift Superstar’
The Verdict: Listening to this album during the UK’s mid-30s degree heatwave has finally frazzled my brain enough to realise that this band is the right one to soundtrack the end of the world. Because only when you’re standing in front of Earth’s burning apocalypse can this make sense.
Release Date: June 26th, 2026 | Producer: Dan Lancaster and Aleks Von Korff | Label: Torpack via Warner
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