Compared with the mighty cosmic thunder of Muse, the undernourished hipsters of the current Britrock scene sound like puny insects. Matt Bellamy, Chris Wolstenholme and Dominic Howard have risen to multimillion-selling success largely outside the orbit of metropolitan critical approval, and have thus escaped the dreary obligation to pretend that they were schooled on a diet of Can and PiL.

Their fourth album certainly makes few concessions to angular New Wave minimalism. Black Holes and Revelations is maximalist to the max, baroque’n’roll on an intergalactic scale. Every one of its 11 tracks goes up to 11, and then some. Anyone who has ever secretly hankered for a stadium-sized fusion of Queen, Prince, Jimi Hendrix, Rachmaninov and Jeff Wayne’s rock musical War of the Worlds will find their prayers have been answered.

The apocalyptic sci-fi conspiracy paranoia of Muse’s previous album, Absolution, has been magnified to supernova proportions. Take a Bow opens the album with shimmering electronic arpeggios reminiscent of Cerrone’s pulsing Eurodisco classic Supernature, before Bellamy slams his guitar into punk-metal overdrive and pours boiling oil from the battlements.

“Cast a spell on the country you run!” he shrieks in piercing falsetto, “you will burn in Hell for your sins!” The object of Bellamy’s hysterical scorn may be Tony Blair, or war in Iraq, or even the giant space lizards who secretly control the universe. Who can tell? Does it really matter? Exo-Politics plunges even deeper into David Icke territory, a towering prog-rock anthem warning against imminent alien invasion co-ordinated by “our leaders in disguise”. Totally barmy, but he sounds as if he means it.

Black Holes and Revelations features Muse’s most dance-friendly rhythms yet, notably on the burly glam-funk single Supermassive Black Hole.

Fortunately, it also contains the odd tender aside, as in the Moorish flamenco flourishes of City of Delusion or the perfumed, waltz-time serenade Hoodoo. Admittedly every track eventually combusts into flaming guitar histrionics and crunching piano chords, but at least the more textured, nuanced elements of Muse’s early work have not been entirely jettisoned.

On the album’s symphonic grand finale, Knights of Cydonia, buzzing synthetic guitar effects reference Telstar by the Tornadoes, the vintage US chart-topper that helped to kickstart the 1960s British Invasion. This may be a sly homage to Bellamy’s father George, a former member of the Tornadoes. But by the time the track boils to its volcanic climax, the singer is back in Wagnerian disco-metal mode. “No one’s going to take me alive!” he screams, “You and I must fight to survive!” Lyrically unhinged, technically dazzling and shameless in their supersized showmanship, Muse remain a glorious anomaly in modern British rock. Black Holes and Revelations may be short on subtlety and soulful introspection, but it will sound magnificent blasting from festival stages this summer. This is their Ring cycle, their Da Vinci Code: an exhilarating monument to excess from the three hoarse men of the apocalypse.

STEPHEN DALTON

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