Muse has always been all about the grand design, even when it doesn’t seem to make a whole lot of sense to the listener. Rarely has this been truer than on Black Holes and Revelations, which is the British act’s most elaborate and scattershot album to date. Muse’s execution here is absolutely true to form: epic in scale, exacting in performance and dripping with eyes-to-the-sky drama to the point of parody.  However, they’ve expanded their repertoire with a few too many disorienting stylistic sleight-of-hands for comfort.

Most obvious is Muse’s bizarre choice for Black Holes and Revelations’ lead single. “Supermassive Black Hole” has no more elaborate studio trickery than most Muse tracks, but the glitz and polish here goes to produce a sort of eighties sleaze-funk anthem that will likely skeeve out as many people as it turns on. Similarly, “Map of the Problematique” casts slightly trance-y sheen on Matt Bellamy’s robotic guitars and plaintive vocals, and the song’s structure ultimately buckles under the weight of the disparate styles. The results are interesting in the context of their back catalogue but are a smidge too ridiculous to make for particularly good listening.

But it’s hard not to love Muse when they do hit home. “Starlight” and “Take a Bow” see the band summoning up sweeping pathos on two of their favorite subjects—love and condemnation—and supporting it gorgeously with skyscraper choruses and glistening synth arpeggios. Though they never quite muster the infectious hard rock fury that drove the excellent “Stockholm Syndrome” from 2004’s Absolution, “Assassin” and “Exo-Politics” allow Dominic Howard to flex his rock-hero skins-man muscles and Bellamy to break out some of his punchier riffing. By the time that the closing trifecta of “City of Delusion,” “Hoodoo” and “Knights of Cydonia” roll around, most listeners will be too involved to care about the songs’ slight bloating and indulgent nature. Black Holes and Revelations, for all of its extra ambitions and confounding style-hopping, is still a satisfying, engrossing experience that’ll satiate most listeners.

Opeth: Live at the Trocadero (October 3^rd)

Opeth are something of a paradox. With their expansive prog-metal style, they’re not exactly easy on the ears, and yet the band has come as close to a household name as any act even remotely related to death metal can get. Opeth owe their relative fame in large part to the dulcet vocal melodies and artful guitar leads of frontman Mikael Akerfeldt, whose deadpan stage raps and spot-on delivery have been lighting up arena-sized venues nightly as part of Dave (Megadeth) Mustaine’s Gigantour package. Like any good metal band, though, Opeth is still very much driven by their core fan base, and they proved it with a showcase of older material on October 3^rd at the (comparably intimate) Trocadero.

The show was technically an off-package date with Gigantour mates Arch Enemy and Sanctity, but there was no question that Opeth was the prime draw. The two openers evoked the usual displays of moshing and headbanging from the largely black-clad attendees, but the crowd exuded little pre-rock-out tension until just before Opeth’s set. Some of the band’s older fans would have been intrigued by the decidedly diverse audience.  Though there were plenty of longhaired elder metalheads, Opeth’s newfound popularity also drew in a young and more colorful element.

Many of these new fans, only familiar with Opeth’s last two or three albums, were likely disappointed by the band’s set. It was a paradise for diehards, though, as Akerfeldt and company plowed through a set heavy with rarities and old favorites. Only two tracks from the wildly successful Ghost Reveries made it into the set (“Ghost of Perdition” and “The Grand Conjuration”), and they were largely outshone by the rousing renditions of classics like “The Leper Affinity” and “Deliverance.” Drummer Martin Axenrot will always have big shoes to fill, and fans will likely always miss masterful ex-drummer Martin Lopez, but Axenrot’s performance was spot on for virtually the whole night. Especially noteworthy was his showing on live rarity but perennial fan favorite “Godhead’s Lament,” even in the face of Akerfeldt’s commanding chorus. The real treat of the night was a virtually unheard-of performance of “Under the Weeping Moon” from Opeth’s debut Orchid album. The trudging, thick nature of the song may have unnerved fans more used to their recent progressive meanderings, but Opeth’s devastating delivery proved their refusal to deviate entirely from their roots.

The set length was relatively short, but by the time Opeth had rocked the Troc with encore crusher “Demon of the Fall,” the vast majority of the crowd was drained by the effort of absorbing the performance. Tuesday’s show was one of the last live Opeth performances this side of their native Sweden for some time to come, as the band is resting and preparing to record a new album. For an act that’s been on the road for almost eighteen months, Opeth gave a remarkably good account of themselves to a hungry crowd.

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