In Europe, and especially in their native England, Muse is used to playing huge arenas in front of huge sold-out crowds of die-hard fans. On Thursday night, they will play at The Sphere in a show that might possibly be the least-hyped event to take place in Buffalo this year.
"There's definitely something fun about playing a smaller venue," said bassist Chris Wolstenhome. "If you play to the same size audience every night, it can get dull. It's nice to mix it up."
Muse's latest album, 2004's "Absolution," is anything and everything but dull. Closer to rock opera than anything Green Day has produced, the apocalypse-themed songs combine heavy guitar rock and classical pianos in a way that has rarely, if ever, been as successful.
How is it that a band so great could have slipped past the radar of American audiences? First of all, this is only their second tour in this country, the first being part of last summer's Coachella Festival. Secondly, they walked away from their American label, Maverick, prior to their 2001 release, "Origin of Symmetry." As a result, that album was not released in the United States until February of this year.
"When Maverick signed us, they saw us as a pop band. We saw ourselves as a rock band," explained Wolstenhome.
However, the band refused to compromise their sound despite these setbacks. After taking a brief hiatus in 2002, they returned to the studio to create "Absolution." The album was recorded all at once in a studio, instead of in pieces in between shows, which is how "Origin" was composed.
"If there's something we like, we think, 'Can we get away with it?' And the answer is, of course we can. We can do what we want."
One thing that Muse has always been renowned for is their live act. The voice of lead singer Matthew Bellamy is almost operatic. When combined with the powerful instrumental accompaniment, the result is a heavy rock that sounds like a full orchestra coming from three people. While their first album, 1999's "Showbiz," failed to convey their sonic potential, their subsequent albums have shown that Muse is capable of a truly enormous sound.
"When we did 'Origin of Symmetry,' we felt it was a huge step forward from 'Showbiz,'" Wolstenhome said. "The live side of the band is very powerful. That doesn't come across in 'Showbiz.'"
Until 2004, Americans were only privy to that first album and completely deprived of the live act, which may be part of the reason Muse hasn't quite caught on in the United States as they have in Europe.
So far, Muse doesn't seem to mind their relative obscurity in the States.
"(On our first U.S. tour) our expectations were low. We thought we'd be playing to twenty or thirty people every night, like we did when we were first starting out," Wolstenhome said. "The first time in Cincinnati, we played in a bar so small that we had to strip our gear down just to get it in."
MTV's Campus Invasion Tour will bring Muse to The Sphere, Thursday at 8 p.m. with opening act Razorlight.
Photo: Courtesy of Laron Fomby
