The Handler - Muse

Classical Style In A Rock Shell

Coming from six albums of rock and experimentation between three musically gifted people, it's no surprise we see an intelligently designed rock powered album like Drones. With their inde, almost punk, alternative roots mixed with years of songwriting experience and Matthew Bellamy's pure music genius, a gem like the Handler is easily born. I am going to focus more on the impressive nature of the writing of this song in this review, the instruments and singing is great, but it really comes from the way each instrument and vocal part plays off each other. From the beginning, guitar and drum parts are bouncing backing back and forth with strong unique sounds. Then the bass and vocals take turns in the chorus and verses in melodic and long held parts. And that solo, oh man, OH MAN, that solo is SO FREAKING GOOD. If you know your classical organ piece, you can tell that Matt must pulled this solo’s style from Bach’s Toccata and Fugue, but in the best way possible. It is such a smoothly strung solo, I often will listen to the song over and over again just for the solo. But breaking after the solo and the bridge the song ends with a hard bang. It is difficult not to want to turn up the volume more and more as the song progresses. Getting back to what I was saying about the writing, the drums, bass and guitar parts are so well written that you could easily listen to these parts individually and be impressed. This is one of the reasons the song is so good too, song is made primarily of those three key instruments, it could be played with a drum set, bass and electric guitar. There is no added synths or other samples that many bands rely on to make this song great. This is one of Muse’s strongest points and what makes their music so amazing, it is their power to create increasingly impressive music using the same instruments they started with years ago.

Originality:9

Instruments:10

Vocals:9

Longevity:9

Red Score:9.25