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Fortean Times has lately enjoyed a crop of articles exploring fortean themes and influences throughout popular music, many from the wild heyday of the 1960s and 1970s. A more recent example, however, is the indie rock band Muse, whose fifth album, The Resistance, was released last month. Their typical themes include conspiracy theories, mind control, ufo­logy, and the end of the world. Of course, such dramatic topics make for engagingly bombastic rock music, but there’s more to Muse’s fortean credentials than simply a penchant for apocalyptic imagery and wailing choruses describing ‘Zetas’ filling the skies.

Most journalistic commentary on the group generally passes over the “mad stuff” about conspiracies and alien life, but it’s worth exploring, if only to point out the way that forteanism continues to penetrate popular culture. Lead songwriter Matthew Bellamy’s fascinat­ion with conspiracies and apocalyptic themes is well known, so it’s unsurprising that the band has, as one reviewer put it, “written the soundtrack to the end of the world.”

The last three Muse albums – Absolut­ion (2003), Black Holes and Revelations (2006), and The Resistance (2009) – have gradually painted a bleak image of a world increasingly controlled by shadowy political groups manipulating whole populations through mind control and systematised ignorance. With a nod to Jim Marrs, Bellamy describes us as “ruled by secrecy”, threatened both by political apathy and spiritual and intellectual impotence. [1]  Absolution constantly warns that “our time is running out” and “our hard times are ahead”. Our ignorance of such conspiracies is actively maintained despite its destruct­ive effects, “morphing us” and leaving us “endlessly cold within”. Pessimistic proclamations of our impotence are juxta­posed alongside violent calls for struggle and resistance, most obviously in ‘Butterflies and Hurricanes’. “You’ve got to be the best,” urges Bellamy, because “your time is now.”

The perils facing us remain obscure throughout Absolution, but become increasingly apparent throughout Black Holes and Revelations. The album, like its fourth track, offers a ‘Map of the Problematique’, charting the environmental, social, and (exo-)political threats facing global society, taking its cue, and title, from the Club of Rome’s report Limits to Growth. [2]  ‘Supermassive Black Hole’ juxtaposes crumbling glaciers with ravenous black holes, while, staying in space, ‘Exo-Politics’ describes an apparent alien invasion, as “Zetas fill the skies” until they are exposed as “our leaders in disguise”. Conspiratorial suspicions persist through ‘Assassin’, as Muse urges us to “join forces underground” and “oppose and disagree”.

The album ends with the ostentatious space-rock epic ‘Knights of Cydonia’, a stirring call-to-arms which, with Bush Jr. in its sights, asks “[H]ow can we win when fools can be kings?”, ending with a screaming exhortation to “fight to survive”. Yet amidst such insurrectionist imperatives there is some stillness. ‘Soldier’s Poem’ offers a poignant reflect­ion on the futility of wars fought for undisclosed reasons, while ‘Invincible’ urges that we “don’t give up the right” and should seek strength and solidarity in love.

If Black Holes and Revelations identifies the threats that humankind faces, then the new album The Resistance is the affirmative response to them. The opener, ‘Uprising’, urges us to “rise up and take the power back” from the “fat-cats”, tear up the “red tape” that “keeps the truth confined”, and “unify and watch our flag ascend”. Against the pessimism and overwhelming sense of irresistible doom of the earlier albums, Muse here issues a direct call for revol­ution. “Hungry for unrest,” Bellamy calls on us to “push beyond peaceful protest.” In a world charged with distrust, ethnic tensions, and social unrest, such calls assume a dark significance. It’s aggress­ive stuff, certainly, but for Muse the justifications have clearly been stacking up. ‘MK-ULTRA’ rhetorically asks: “how much deception can you take?” and warns that “they” are “breaking through”. Who “they” are is revealed in ‘United States of Eurasia’, a stirring anthem for a trans-continental empire whose inevitability only grows as we “fall in line” until there is “no-one we can trust”. Bellamy was inspired by the US geostrategist Zbigniew Brzeziński’s The Grand Chessboard and its thesis that the United States must control the Eurasian landmass in order to secure its energy and mineral supplies. [3]  Despite these emphases on protest and celebration of human resilience, the band doesn’t abandon its apocalyptic concerns: the conclus­ion is that “we are losing control”. The Resistance thus ends with the three-part symphony ‘Exogenesis’, documenting the eventual abandonment of a desiccated Earth by the last survivors of the human race, as we “spread our codes to the stars.”

Musically and thematically, Muse makes a bold and dramatic statement, alternately invigorating and apocalyptic. Whether or not you buy into the worries about terrestrial peril and extraterrest­rial destinies, the message that “the end is nigh” has never sounded so good.

Notes
1 Jim Marrs: Rule By Secrecy, Harper Collins, 2002
2 Club of Rome: Limits to Growth, Universe Books, 1972
3 Zbigniew Brzezinski: The Grand Chessboard, Basic Books, 1997