- Critic score
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- By date
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FilterA massive concept album that is so gluttonously huge-sounding that it makes The Wall sound like a Sebadoh record. [#10, p.94]
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Despite the daunting Radiohead-colored cloud that hangs heavy over Muse, the band pushes the limits of its slick, pre-apocalyptic rock with a self-assured strut.
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MojoPushes the trio's grandiose delusions onto new levels of interpretative-dancing, mirror-cracking excess. [Oct 2003, p.107]
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Like Coldplay on A Rush of Blood to the Head, Muse sound like a band who are at the top of their game. Their confidence carries you through the album's excesses.
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The most inventive and exhilarating rock music Britain's producing right now.
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BlenderA daring and triumphant concoction. [#27, p.140]
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Muse continue to make unrelenting hardcore art rock; Absolution is a tad cheesy, a bit too grandiose in its ambitions, bursting at the seams with too many ideas, and thus exactly what any Muse fan craves.
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Muse write... the same way Metallica write, i.e. just compiling bits of music then sticking them together, except theyre more impressed with their fragments (though theyre simpler and duller and even more remarkably similar to each other than Metallicas), so they make them go on longer and repeat them more times.
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It's too bad that vocalist Matt Bellamy doesn't bring as much ingenuity to his singing.
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Absolution is an emotional, philosophical, sophisticated, poetic, and beautiful piece of rock music.
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Muse have widened the goalposts and re-established what rock is allowed to stand for. Next to Absolution, even something as majestic as Elephant sounds so painfully small.
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A truly elemental opus.
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Ultimately, the arrangements of more than half the songs are defined by their progressive '70s bombast and pretentiousness.
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Alternative PressAbsolution's chaotic choruses feel like the triumphant culmination of some earth-shattering undertaking. [Jul 2004, p.146]
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Q MagazineFor sheer bravado and imagination it's something that few bands will top this year. [Oct 2003, p.109]
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'Absolution' is Muse's most accomplished album to date, and kicks their - at the time - excellent debut album 'Showbiz' into the ground.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 380 out of 415
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Mixed: 14 out of 415
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Negative: 21 out of 415
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Oct 29, 2010
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valenbJun 5, 2006
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Mar 2, 2013