Unbelievable Muse!

This is another example of why we should follow our gut instincts more often. Despite all shorts of comments trying to discourage us about it, CEU Weekly attended the Muse concert that took place in the Budapest Arena last Tuesday the 20th of November. We received all pieces of advice such as “the previous time they came to Budapest, the Arena was almost empty”, “their last album is not that good”, “it is so expensive”, and so on.. The pessimists can always find reasons not to do anything. However, we attended, and we ratify that it was worth every single Forint we paid for it.

OK, we admit that most Muse fans do not consider their last album as good as “Absolution” or “Black Holes and revelations”. Two albums that, by the way, already occupy a relevant and influential place in the history of rock music as the important milestones they are. But it would be almost impossible to keep up to that level of quality and revolutionaryness! Once you develop a new style, that is by itself a breakthrough, you cannot really avoid resembling yourself, and consequently the level of novelty decreases.

And probably the band members are pretty aware of their audience’s perception, for the playlist for the concert concentrated on all their greatest hits. The second song they played was “Hysteria”, one of my personal favourites, automatically releasing an enormous adrenaline high just after the first two seconds of that already legendary distorted bass riff. From then and on, one hit followed other, just incorporating the most representative songs from “The second law”. “Starlight”, “Super massive black hole”, “Sing for absolution”, “Time is running out”, “Uprising”, “New born”… a concert definitely up to the most demanding expectations of the public.

But we should not forget in any case that, in the case of Muse, the playlist accounts only for about a 40% of the performance (being optimistic). Because we all know Muse’s reputation for their coloristic and spectacular live performances. And, my god, they honoured that reputation! The light and laser display was not only worth seeing by itself, but it was meticulously synchronized and suiting every single song of the concert. All kinds of combinations of colours and video displays matched together with the tunes to create a definitely magical atmosphere.

Summarizing: to all those who insisted it was not worth the money to go to see Muse playing live, you missed one of those once-in-a-lifetime concerts!

Sergio Rejado Albaina