The 2nd Law

For a band so seemingly full of big ideas, Muse sounds on its sixth album like a hard-rocking collection of other bands, some that they've previously been compared to, and others new.

The 2nd Law is a love-it-or-hate-it record. It contains some of the best songs Muse has done in recent memory, but also the worst

Having seemingly mastered all modes of excess, you'd think The 2nd Law would be Muse's unimpeachable triumph. It's not, and the problem isn't that Muse have gone too far... they haven't gone far enough.

Each new album (arriving as it does with the requisitely pompous title: Absolution, Black Holes and Revelations, The Resistance) finds Muse attempting to out-blitz OK Computer and Kid A in terms of overly serious Englishmen weeping for modern civilization and its myriad alienations. Which simply makes The 2nd Law's 50-plus minutes of 21st-century-art-rock-meets-sappy-popera business as usual.

For now they remain pretty comfortable with the idea of obscene over-inflation. So should we.

The 2nd Law certainly isn't the career bomb that many might worry it to be, but that doesn't mean it's not any less of a red flag.

Though not all of the band's experiments necessarily pay off, the album feels like a worthy proving ground for the ideas that will take the band boldly into the future.

The 13 tracks lack some focus and cohesion, weakening what should be a limitless, quasi-spiritual slice of rock and roll transcendence.

Too much of the album simply plods from dreary verse to dreary verse.

This isn't an album; it's a series of OCD thoughts thrown together in passing, the only sense of cohesion coming during a rare chance for bassist Chris Wolstenholme to take centre stage on vocals.