“I think there were a lot of songs on The 2nd Law that, if I’m honest, were an absolute bitch to play live,” admits Muse bassist Chris Wolstenholme. However, when asked if it’s a relief to be playing riff-laden rock and roll again, as the band do on new album Drones, Chris isn’t so sure.
“I don’t know about a relief. I really enjoyed making The 2nd Law as well. I think with The 2nd Law, it was a very different type of album. We set ourselves a bunch of totally different challenges on that album and moved into some areas that were outside of our comfort zone.”
They weren’t the only ones. The 2nd Law, Muse’s sixth studio effort, an eclectic collection of grand, genre-bending tracks, divided critics and fans alike. Some bemoaned that there were too many electronic elements on the record, others complained that there weren’t enough.
“I think the main difference with this album was that it was going back to more familiar ground and when you’re in familiar ground, you’re generally a lot more relaxed about things. I’d say there was definitely a lot less stress on this album, but you know stress isn’t always a bad thing.”
Having spent the better part of a decade playing to crowds that number in the tens of thousands in stadiums around the globe, stress is not alien to Chris or bandmates Matt Bellamy and Dominic Howard. But besides providing Chris with a chance to relax, Drones reasserts what is for Chris at the very core of Muse – the power of the three-piece.
“I think if you listen to our albums, the most consistent thing is the three-piece,” he says. “The sound of Matt and Dom and I playing our instruments. I think over the years, even as early as Origin of Symmetry, there were some additional influences coming in, some more electronic stuff, the orchestral stuff and the classical influences started creeping in.”
“I kind of feel like The 2nd Law was almost the culmination of all those things coming to a head. I personally feel like the electronic thing, well how far do we take that before we become an electronic band? Or if we really push the classical side of it, what happens to the three-piece?”
“It almost feels like if it had gone any further, the three-piece element of the band would not have been the focal point. For this album, we just needed to just strip all that other stuff away and just remind ourselves that the focal point of this band is the three-piece. That’s where all the power and energy comes from.”
“I think it’s great to experiment with other bits and pieces now and again, but I think for this album it just felt like that’s what we wanted to do. It felt like the next logical step.” That said, the album is still brimming with varied influences and eclectic soundscapes.
Opening track ‘Dead Inside’ is reminiscent of the industrial synth sounds of Gary Numan, ‘Psycho’ powers through with the blues rock flavour of AC/DC and Black Sabbath, ‘Reapers’ reminds one of Van Halen’s ‘Eruption’, while ‘The Globalist’ contains shades of Ennio Morricone.
In order to make this varied mix work, the band drafted producer Robert Lange, affectionately known as Mutt. “I think with Mutt, he’s not just a producer, he’s a songwriter as well. So I think were certain musical ideas he had that we really felt we could trust,” explains Chris.
“We’ve worked with quite a few producers in our time and all of them have brought different things to this band and they’re all people I respect massively. I think the one thing that Mutt had is he’s written massive, number one hit singles all over the world with lots of different people. I think it brings an extra musical element.”
“He was also important with the sound, as well. I think if you listen to a lot of his albums, they all sound very consistent from start to finish. I think that was something that was really important on this album. Obviously, with it being a concept album, it needed to have a concept sonically as well, something that was a consistent backdrop to the story.”
While Chris admits that some of the band’s previous albums could be viewed as concept records, Drones is something of an unprecedented event in Muse’s discography. As he puts it, “They’re not like this one. They certainly don’t have the narrative that this album has.”
That narrative, which in frontman Bellamy’s words concerns “the journey of a human, from their abandonment and loss of hope, to their indoctrination by the system to be a human drone, to their eventual defection from their oppressors”, has raised some eyebrows, even among their fans.
The single release of ‘Psycho’ was not without controversy, with some taking exception to the band’s perceived criticism of the armed forces. While Chris admits “there’s always a danger” that an album will stir controversy, at the end of the day “it depends on how you decide you want to interpret the album”.
“To me, Matt wrote the lyrics, so he’s very involved in it. I can almost be in the middle where I can listen to the concept from an outsider’s point of view,” he says. “And to me, the album is just metaphors. I don’t know how literally people are supposed to take it.”
“I think if people want to take it literally then that’s absolutely fine, but I think a lot of it is about the use of technology and how growing technology has disconnected us from the human race a little bit and [we’ve] kind of almost become brainwashed and overtaken and living in this kind of virtual, digital world, and completely lost empathy.”
“I think a lot of the album deals with that, not just ‘Psycho’, obviously ‘The Drill Sergeant’ and ‘The Solider’. The start of ‘Psycho’, if you listen to that and take it literally, you’re going to form a very different opinion.”
Instead, Chris is focusing on touring in support of Drones. Something he’s particularly looking forward to, as the band can finally transmit the sounds of the studio to the stage. “[With The 2nd Law there were certain moments and certain songs were it was like, that was really great, how the hell are we going to do this live?”
“I personally feel like when we went on tour with The 2nd Law, it took a good six weeks or maybe even two months to really kind of settle down into it. I remember those first two shows, there was a lot of concentration and a lot of worrying about how the songs were coming across, because we were in fairly unfamiliar ground.”
“So there definitely was that thing of being in the studio and knowing there wasn’t going to be any nasty surprises when it came to playing this stuff live. We can effectively just set up as a three-piece band.”
“I think it’s quite nice to be able to not worry about that, to pick up the instruments that we’re all familiar with, we all know our best instruments, and just go out and play and enjoy ourselves.”
Muse’s seventh studio album, ‘Drones’, will drop this Friday, 5th June via Warner Bros.
