While Muse’s previous albums are heavier on distortion and tend to rampage, B&R is refined and more straightforward. Their massive sound is intensely focused and rises to unheard of elevations. To say this album has an “epic” style would be an understatement. It has immense operatic dimensions of Queen, Radiohead, even Wagner. As the cover suggests, the album has an apocalyptic atmosphere, and bigger is better.

The ominous, flickering “Take a Bow” opens the album by condemning a world leader (pick one) and sets a tone of clenched dissonance that Muse has built their mini-revolution on. The track expands in a way that conjures images of a monster waking.

In contrast to the venom, “Starlight” and “Invincible” gush affection. The former is a snappy, piano-etched ode to inspiration. The latter is a rolling, grooved romp waxes emo (”together we are invincible”). “Assassin” is alternacore adventure in the mountains. Bellamy’s voice strides over peaks and echoes in a grunge stampede. “Map of the Problematique” is industrial grind bent on repairing isolation. The potency is unparalleled.

The blast-pop “Exo Politics” lumbers along with lulling vocals and thick punchrock refrains. “Knights of Cydonia” is the conclusion; an expansive Four Horsemen-like romp across a distorted plain. Haunting wails and moans set up a climactic “fight to survive” against the perceived forces keeping us in mental, social, and political prisons clashed with throughout the album.

Matt Bellamy quietly has the greatest voice of the modern alternative sound. Like the moody weirdos that comprise most of Gen X, his voice builds and falls erratically, with stark, off-kilter contrasts, but with unquestionable force.

This time around Muse captured their ferocity in a more accessible, loftier way; a simply colossal sound. B&R’s success is in the harmony of portentious lyrics, grandiose instrumentation, and Bellamy’s unrivaled, expansive vocals. Triumphant on many levels.