Muse try to WOW us again with their tenth offering, a glorified revision of 2022’s disastrous Will of the People. However cheesy it may be, The Wow! Signal‘s added sense of cohesion is at least easier to stomach.
Release date: June 26, 2026 | Warner Records | Facebook | Instagram | YouTube | Website
If you were to compile a list of the most frustratingly hit-or-miss bands ever, then Muse ought to be near the top of that list. My feelings on this modern alternative rock band are in a constant state of flux. Over the years, they’ve gone from sounding a bit like The Bends-era Radiohead (Showbiz) to blending typical tropes of progressive rock with symphonic sounds (Origin of Symmetry) to pulling a Coldplay by becoming stadium-filling pop rock (Black Holes and Revelations). I’m torn on whether or not this is a good thing. As much as I appreciate dystopian themes, Muse have a habit of exaggerating the cheesiest cliches of the genre and know fuck-all about subtlety. At the same time, there is a small part of me that still appreciates their darker, distorted side, along with the fact that they’ve always been a highly skilled trio. Skill doesn’t always translate to great albums, but imagine how much more ire Muse would attract if their musicianship wasn’t nearly as tight.
With 2026’s The Wow! Signal, the English rockers somewhat lean into a more aggressive tone, but the cliches of old on tracks like “Be With You” still leave me befuddled. Much like Will of the People, their previous album, it has ten songs, but it’s not nearly as abbreviated as before. For Muse, this is undoubtedly a net positive for them, since their music thrives with more space, not less. Length was not the only fatal flaw of Will of the People, though. By the band’s own admission, it was originally supposed to be a greatest hits compilation, but they figured they could instead make ten brand new songs that served as a montage through their career. However, the glaring issue with that was how it made for an incoherent cheese-fest bookended by some of their dimmest songs yet. It doesn’t get much more aggravating than the title track ripping off Marilyn Manson, of all musicians!
Mercifully, on The Wow! Signal, their tenth full-length studio album, the songs are given slightly more room for their compositions to breathe, the transitions and stylistic shifts don’t feel as forced, and for once, Muse actually sound like they’re trying to dial it down a touch! If songs like “Shimmering Scars” and “Hexagons” are any indication, the core trio of Matthew Bellamy, Chris Wolstenholme, and Dominic Howard playing around with dynamics again is refreshing, to say the least. I think credit should also be given to Dan Lancaster, as overutilized in hard rock as he’s been lately, since Will of the People desperately needed an outside producer to say ‘No.‘ Even lead vocalist Mr. Theremin Voice–I mean, Bellamy!–sounds like he’s toning down his wavering theatrics somewhat. All of this is to say that this album is essentially just a glorified revision of the last album, not so much a continuation as it is a career course correction, and for this reason alone, it’s not terrible.
That said, it’s not all that special. Wow! may have a higher ratio of good tracks to ‘Oh god, why?‘ tracks, but that doesn’t seem to matter when listening to the unbearable cosmic hell that is “Nightshift Superstar”. This track, along with the slightly more tolerable “Cryogen” (even with that facepalm of a chorus, which goes ‘Cryogen / I can never cry again’), is the worst song Muse has released in light-years, and its inclusion on Wow! makes my ears burn from the level of discomfort BloodPop‘s production causes. The drums sound just as squished and mushy as Bellamy’s putrid falsetto notes, and Wolstenholme’s scratchy bass line only adds fuel to my argument with anyone who thinks the riffs in “Supermassive Black Hole” are ‘badass‘! Worst of all, “Nightshift Superstar” completely mars the album’s momentum! Yeah, thanks Muse. I fucking loathe this song.
As for “Cryogen”, the other sub-par song on Wow!, it does kind of rock, but I always thought the drums on this tune were trying too hard to be punk. The rest of the song’s composition as well as its lyrical tidbits are on-the-nose, even though its opening guitar riff reminds me of something from Absolution. It sounds like it fits the vibe of this album more appropriately, so take it or leave it. I could very well say ‘take it or leave it‘ about Wow! overall because Muse have always been so damn hit-or-miss for me.
Even its best moments, like the pop-meets-metal anthem “Unravelling” and the rib-bruising guitar crunch of “The Sickness in You & I” fall into the gray area of quality. They’re good enough as they are, but it still doesn’t make them indispensable–not even Wow!‘s Ellie Goulding feature could sway even the most militant Muse hater, and I say this as a fan of Goulding–so while each song is not as lackluster as they all were on WOTP, they still read more as revisions than anything truly original. Still, Muse‘s The Wow! Signal is a more cohesive step up, and that alone should be easier for most people to stomach, even with all the cheesiness.
Photo taken courtesy of Polocho
