‘Resistance’ isn’t futile for Muse

Muse, from left, Christopher Wolstenholme, Matthew Bellamy and Dominic Howard, are making their way to the Mandalay Bay Events Center, playing at 7:30 p.m. Sunday.

It’s good to be the Supremacy.

You know, the authoritarians Muse is always trying to overthrow in songs such as “Resistance”? Yeah, that’s us. Don’t tell them, but we made them.

We figured it had been too long since there was a rock band that could fill an arena playing current music. Sure, there’s Nickelback, but nobody in a long time playing epic space rock, with orchestras and big Pink Floydian light shows.

So we created them, making sure the frontman, Matthew Bellamy, was good-looking enough to have a movie-star sweetheart (Kate Hudson, because Gwyneth was taken).

We’ve made them sound more like Queen of late, perhaps because we saw that “We Will Rock You” musical with its Orwellian plot once too often. But we remembered now and then to make it funky (“Panic Station,” “Supermassive Black Hole”) and throw in some Rage Against the Machine guitar work, electronica rhythms and of course, some anthemic U2.

(In fact, the light show for this arena tour draws a lot of comparisons to the video-screen explosion of U2’s “Zoo TV” tour.)

Muse is an amalgamation of so many other bands we didn’t know where to stop. Some of the songs are so out there, such as the outer-space spaghetti Western “Knights of Cydonia,” that they sound like something completely original.

Just don’t tell them.

Contact reporter Mike Weatherford at mweatherford@
reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0288.