Jon Dolan
View all posts by Jon Dolan June 28, 2026
Tim Saccenti* The 10th Muse album takes its name from the Wow! Signal, an unexplained radio transmission detected by a mind-blown astronomer in 1977 that’s been held up as a possible example of extraterrestrial communication. The amount of pomp and pump Muse can slam into one song can have a certain wow-factor; tracks like “Uprising” and “Supermassive Black Hole” made them leaders in fist-pumping arena rock. But as is often the case with this ostentatiously bombastic U.K. band, their music won’t blow your mind so much as beat it into numb submission.
On The Wow! Signal, Muse work their signature pile-up of Queen and Korn and Radiohead, Seventies arena theatrics, Eighties synth-rock, Nineties alt-rock, and 2000s goth-metal. Frontman and mastermind Matt Bellamy returns to his longstanding theme of the endless search for something pure and real in a world of conformity, hypocrisy and alienation. On the pummeling “Cryogen” the coldness of outer space is a metaphor for the loneliness of life. The single “Be With You” goes from cathedral organ to electronic throb to AOR orgy, as Bellamy sings about longing to connect.
