Muse in Glasgow: We will be victorious

*****

Recreate the thrill of watching Muse by humming We Are The Champions and Bohemian Rhapsody at a Laserquest.

Well, it may be a frivolous gag, but as with any joke, there is an element of truth that allows the caricature to kind of work.

To a point.

Rewind 24 years and the Devon-formed band were being compared to early Radiohead with a fistful of sparkling often piano-led anthems such as Sunburn and Muscle Museum with a view to a hugely promising debut album Showbiz.

Even then it was too easy to be pigeonholed.

Back then like now it was front man Matt Bellamy's virtuosity that stood out. It was more difficult to do then, it seemed. Live, he did everything, piano, guitar hero and enigmatic front man and sometimes all at the same time.  And they were nobodies.

Now there is less time on the keyboards, and much, much more everything else and minus all from the days when the Teignmouth lad was supporting, yes supporting, Skunk Anansie.

Well this is 2023, after all and Bellamy and co are somebodies.  They have become a raging beast of a guitar band at a time when guitar bands are supposed to be dead and buried.  

Try telling the thousands on a wet Friday night, standing on some grass, in a field on the south side of Glasgow.

As the band strode on, faces hidden with metallic android masks, they rip into the camped-up glam rock stomp that is the title track of their latest hyper-blast of a record Will of the People. It is a T-Rex transmutation revolution with unlocked daughters and babies being thrown out with the bath water.  The nation is smashed to pieces.

While they welcome everyone to the celebration of 23 years of evolution - it is clear that Muse have become a law unto themselves and if you don't get their justice, you will be at home.

What Bellamy is showing is that he refuses to be pigeon-holed.

With every glam rock stomp there is one of the highlights of this set which was promoted to the first song of the encore - Kill or be Killed another sharp cut from their latest album. This is where Bellamy and co are at their most delightfully crazed and heaviest. This is a falsetto-fuelled groove metal growler that manages to tiptoe through extreme riffs while still hitting you between the eyes with earworm hooks.

"Fate has brought us here to face, our hopes and dreams erased, either kill or be killed," Bellamy rasps before flitting into an ethnic System of a Down 'la la la la' passage. It is Bohemian Rhapsody for air guitar players without ever sounding anything like Queen.

It is one of the earliest songs from the second album Origin of Symmetry which really ignites Bellahouston Park, with a sea of heads bouncing against the night sky. Plug in Baby is one of those exhilirating whirlwind rock stomps that just feels like it should go on forever, but of course it doesn't. There is a squeal beside me as Bellamy goes into full blown falsetto bellowing: "And I've seen your loving, mine is gone. And i've been in trouble, whoaaaaaa."  At least I think that is his wail.   It could really be anything and it would still sound like the earths colliding.

There is little by way of love songs, and plenty by way of dungeons, dragons, hyper this, and sci fi that.

A thrilling run through of Muse's first top-ten hit, Time Is Running Out leads Bellamy into what may well be tongue-in-cheek platitudes.

"We love Scotland," he says. "We don't get here enough."

And then we get the adorable mid-paced Madness from their 2012 album The 2nd Law which has me thinking of It's a Kind of Magic from Queen.  There we go, pigeonholed again.

It is only Muse that can come up with the block rocking guitar blast that is We Are F*cking F*cked - a line that is repeated quite a lot - and get away with it.

It is the gorgeous Starlight one of the many highlights in this memorable 22-song set that comes close to the early piano-led days of old and yet it sounds as monstrously bombastic and delightfully overblown as the rest of their fanastically ludicrous cocktail of a set.

It all comes to a close, aptly with the song that sounds like Bellamy has written a spaghetti western theme and decided to spice it up with grandiose guitars.

"You and I must fight for our rights. You and I must fight to survive," Bellamy implores on Knights of Cydonia as a maelstrom of guitars clash and smash into eventual silence.

Yup, definitely pigeonholed.