Their bleakest end-of-days sci-fi satire yet.
★Like Squid Game gone Mad Max, a postapocalyptic battle rages on the O2’s screens between a rebel uprising of hooded, mirror-faced androids and a crumbling empire led by a horned mecha-demon called Baph. The skirmish spills onto the stage, where three of the rebels (plus an additional keyboard sidekick) rampage beneath a flaming symbol made up of the initials of their slogan – Will Of The People – making demands in military-glam style. “Welcome to the desecration, baby,” the ringleader howls in shrill falsetto.
This, then, is Muse’s sci-fi satire on the current geopolitical shit-show, and their typically end-of-days outlook on the encroaching cataclysm is as bleak as they’ve ventured. Yet they send us out with smiles on faces. Modern space-rock behemoths such as Hysteria, Stockholm Syndrome, Time Is Running Out and Plug In Baby still sound like billionaires could flee the burning planet in them. Meanwhile, the 40-foot head of a rebel overseer with an ever-shifting digital face – Matt Bellamy singing Kill Or Be Killed; Terminator 2 transformations galore; a parade of cinematic serial killers and monsters for spook rocker You Make Me Feel Like It’s Halloween – emerges from the back of the stage and peers around at the audience. By the galloping Knights Of Cydonia Baph arrives in stagefilling inflatable glory, as if calling down Armadeggon. Loudly, London surrenders.