In concert: Muse

"Lasers." (All photos by Brandon Wu/FTWP)

By Chris Klimek

It’s almost impossible to imagine England’s future-shock trio Muse peddling their warp-speed, Dark Matter riffs and florid piano interludes anywhere smaller than the Patriot Center, the coziest basketball arena on the itinerary of its U.S. tour. The band traversed American football stadiums last fall supporting U2, a gig they may have clinched for their ability to make the headliners appear restrained and subtle by comparison.

(Excess of everything, plus more pictures after the jump.)

Subtlety was irrelevant at last-night’s crowd-pleasing ode to space operatic excess at the Patriot Center. For the 105-minute pageant to express the band’s apocalypse-is-coming, so-shall-we-rock quintessence any more perfectly would have required harvester-like robots to wander into the audience and atomize us with their laser rays. A stage comprised of three telescoping video-cube platforms yawned open to reveal the three band members, lightsabering their way through “Uprising,” the pulsing, ominous opener of their latest album, “The Resistance.” (This is one band where the titles tell you exactly what you’re in for.) Lyrics “They will not control us! We will be victorious!” flashed as the crowd chanted along.

Drawing from throughout their catalog, the threesome remained in relentless musical lockstep all night. Their chops and commitment are unimpeachable. But for a band that got a gushing on-air endorsement from Glenn Beck last fall for admonitions of creeping totalitarian bondage, Muse’s live show demonstrates an odd lack of self-awareness. The evening's recurring image-menu of warfare and calamity, subtitles urging us to STAND! AND! FIGHT!, strongly recall the “two-minute hate” from Orwell’s “1984,” a book these guys surely know all about.