[Music] Drones by Muse

To be honest, Muse is a band I discovered thanks to a Korean webcomic (or “webtoon”, as they’re known there) that referenced one of their songs in a panel. Before that, I never really listened to their songs except for the occasional play of Starlight on the radio.

I listened to their album The 2nd Law, and enjoyed it. (I particularly love the track Madness.) I highly recommend it to anyone in search of a good alternative rock album; it was Grammy-nominated, after all.

From The 2nd Law though, I started to check out their other songs and other albums. Just recently, I listened to their 2015 album Drones. Needless to say, I was blown away.

Drones is a progressive album. This means that each song is tied up with the other songs of the album, usually because of a theme or story. (This also means that this album is best listened to from track 1 to 12, one after the other.) The story of Drones seems to focus on a society that pumps out human drones, and what the people of that society do as a consequence.

Each song is interesting in its own right, but I liked how there were less-than-a-minute tracks here that weren’t exactly songs. They were more like short fillers that bridged the previous song to the next one. Drill Sergeant, for example, is nothing but a clip of a couple of guys shouting, but it’s essentially an introduction to Psycho, which features a continued conversation of the one happening in Drill Sergeant.

The music itself sounds like classic Muse, but there were different ambiances for each song, as each seemed to fit a theme. The Globalist, a 10-minute song, is a good example of this: it’s a whirlwind of sound and lyrics that gives progression to the events happening in the backdrop of the album. I also enjoyed how Drones (the song) had a kind of chorale vibe that brought a nice ending touch to the album.

All in all, I enjoyed the experience of listening to Drones. It’s a good 52 minutes to listen to in one sitting, but it’s an enjoyable trek into a curious society of people that are Dead Inside and who just want to Revolt, ending with an Aftermath of everything that goes down after. Great stuff.