The 2nd Law

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 array of musical styles on show across The 2nd Law means that, like many of this band's past albums, it doesn't entirely coalesce into a seamless collection of songs... But when this album works, it works well.

Muse fans will have a hard time being disappointed by "The 2nd Law," and rookies have a new perfect place to jump in.

A concept album based on the second law of thermodynamics would likely be awful if done by Radiohead or Coldplay, but Muse nails it on The 2nd Law, creating a tale about survival within an imploding society.

Typically rich, but this time, a playful outing.

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

The 2nd Law is seriously fun.

Leave the rock operas to other Olympians; like elite sprinters, Muse are best when they're surging straight ahead.

Does this all meld together into the cohesive whole of a perfect album? Well, no, not really. But does The 2nd Law represent a band whose only limitations seem to be the high ceiling of their collective imagination? The answer here is an emphatic yes. [6 Oct 2012, p.52]

This is a far funnier (and funkier) effort than 2009's "The Resistance," which handled similar themes with a glum sobriety.

Muse and David Campbell's melodramatic arrangements occasionally raise a smile, but if you like your rock symphonic and your vocals histrionic, The 2nd Law delivers. [Nov 2012, p.87]

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

What Muse have done is re-establish themselves as a respected British institution by being fun.

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.

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.

The real surprises come when they sound relaxed, even delicate. [Oct 2012, p.92]

It's quite good.

[Muse] is their most expansive and varied yet, filling out a go-to mix of Queen boom and Radiohead gloom with disco Bowie, Eighties U2, metal, dubstep and enough strings to support a suspension bridge.

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 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 scale [on The 2nd Law] is such that you have to stand back in a kind of addled awe. Much in the same way that you might regard a 75ft-high luminous pink pissing flamingo water feature; you have to admire the size of the ambition and the craftsmanship, even if it's not something you'd necessarily want at your own house.

No one goes to see a blockbuster for its profundity and deep characterisation. They go for the stunts and the special effects, both of which The 2nd Law delivers.

The none-more-Nietzschean, grandiose-apocalyptic mood continues through the utterly splendid Olympic theme "Survival", with its über-ELO arrangement, and "Animals", with its sound effects of an angry, riotous mob.

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

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.

Muse's rather absurd spaceship may be welded together from bits of other acts--but it still flies.

Muse redeem high-camp absurdity with a genius for sumptuous arrangements, mighty pop hooks and irresistible melodrama. [Nov 2012, p.79]