I can’t be sure what stepping into the future would feel like, but I picture it to be something like standing in the crowd for Brit space-rockers Muse in Abu Dhabi on Saturday.
The last time I saw them was amid the sweltering summer heat of 2008 during their headliner spot at Dubai Desert Rock Festival. Inevitably, I was crushed against the barricade by Guns N’ Roses fans who were there to see Slash’s band Velvet Revolver taking the stage a couple hours prior. Having to be hauled out of the crowd by a security guard before Muse even came on sort of put a damper on the whole experience.
This time, however, on the third night of F1 concerts on Yas Island, there was a nice breeze surrounding me with adequate breathing room and no one attempting to start a mosh pit, making it an immediately superior experience.
The trio fired off the night with smoke machines and a supersonic crescendo of sounds that left the crowd reeling. The electronic intro set a hard and heavy pace that should have been tough to follow, but they matched it effortlessly over the 80 minutes.
Visually and aurally futuristic, the set was driven by frontman Matthew Bellamy’s atmospheric falsetto tone and his experimental guitar riffs that were so masterful I occasionally forgot to listen to anything else. Expert drummer Dominic Howard looked like he’d stepped straight out of the ’80s with his shaggy mop of blonde hair, and bassist Chris Wolstenholm won cool points as the frets of his guitar lit up with different colours throughout the performance.
After every three or four relatively unknown songs, they whipped out a popular enough hit to warrant the eruption of an unruly singalong. The first was astronomical tune Supermassive Black Hole, followed closely by the contagious desperation of Hysteria. By the time the crowd was yelling along to Plugin Baby, you could barely hear Bellamy himself.
In true rock star style, he played his guitar blindly over his shoulders and, at one point, on his knees with his forehead pressed to the ground. The entire night, Bellamy was a ball of energy who made you feel lazy if you stood still for too long. It didn’t take much for him to smash one of his guitars on stage — not once, but twice — for no discernible reason other than that it was the gritty rock star thing to do.
Other highlights included the funk rock throwback vibe of Panic Station, the tantalising and much-awaited performance of Our Time is Running Out, and Bellamy’s high-tech sunglasses that beamed snippets of lyrics during Madness. The band closed out their set with the anthemic and unforgettable song of survival Knights of Cydonia, building toward a truly epic and ground-shaking drum extro that ended the night off exactly how it started: with a bang.
