Muse - The Resistance (2LP)

The Resistance landed in 2009 with the confidence of a band that knew arenas were theirs for the taking. Muse had already conquered festival fields, but this record sharpened their grand vision into something both theatrical and strangely intimate. It went straight to number one in the UK and Australia, won the Grammy for Best Rock Album, and gave us Uprising, a protest chant you could hear spilling out of car windows and pub speakers for months. Uprising even topped the US Alternative Songs chart, not bad for a group that loved sneaking in classical motifs and conspiracy chat between riffs.

Part of the album’s charm is its unapologetic mix of sci-fi paranoia and pop hooks. Matt Bellamy leans into dystopian romance on Resistance, drawing on the language of Nineteen Eighty-Four with a stadium-sized synth bed and a chorus built to ricochet around concrete. Undisclosed Desires slides in with glossy drum machines, minimal guitar, and a slinky vocal that nods to R&B production trends of the late 2000s. It was a curveball at the time, yet it still feels like Muse, just cleaned up and leaning on the pulse rather than the crunch.

The band produced the record themselves, working from their base in Italy, and you can hear that sense of freedom. The mix from Mark Spike Stent brings clarity without trimming the band’s show-off streak. United States of Eurasia is the most obvious example. It starts like Queen in a velvet cape, all layered harmonies and piano fanfare, then detours into Collateral Damage, a gentle coda built around Chopin’s Nocturne in E flat. It should feel indulgent. Instead it plays like a curtain call in miniature, a moment of quiet after the fireworks.

There is still plenty of thunder. Unnatural Selection hits with a jagged, almost thrash-like riff before swerving into ecclesiastical organ and back again. MK Ultra, named after the CIA program, jitters with arpeggiated synths and panic in the snare, echoing the lyric’s mind-melt imagery. I Belong to You may be the album’s purest love song, then halfway through it opens its arms to Saint-Saëns. Bellamy sings a section of Mon coeur s’ouvre à ta voix in French, and somehow the jump from bass groove to opera feels cheeky rather than pretentious. That balancing act is the record’s quiet achievement.

The closer is where Muse lay their cards on the table. Exogenesis Symphony, a three-part suite, is Bellamy’s orchestral daydream rendered with full strings and a patient, cinematic arc. Overture swells and heaves like a launch sequence, Cross-Pollination wrestles with dissonance and release, and Redemption lands on a melody tender enough to silence a rowdy crowd. If you own The Resistance vinyl, this side is where the format really breathes. The crescendos bloom, the quiet sections sit deeper, and the journey feels more like a single statement than a chain of tracks. It is also the reason so many collectors hunt for Muse albums on vinyl in the first place. Their scale makes sense on a big, generous medium.

The artwork deserves a nod too. London studio La Boca delivered that vivid, colour-wheel design that looks like a human mind turning into a prism. It fits the music’s push and pull between order and chaos. There is a theatrical streak throughout, which some critics found overcooked on release, but time has been kind. The hooks are strong, the musicianship keen, and the band’s taste for grand gestures lands more often than it misses. Uprising remains a crowd roarer, Resistance and Undisclosed Desires round out a punchy front third, and the back half rewards repeat plays with details you might miss on headphones.

If you collect Muse vinyl, this one still earns shelf space. The sequencing works, the singles stand up, and that symphonic finale turns an already big record into a full-blown narrative. For anyone digging through bins or looking to buy Muse records online, The Resistance vinyl is an easy recommendation, especially if your turntable diet leans toward ambitious rock that isn’t afraid of strings and synthesisers in the same breath. And if you are shopping around vinyl records Australia or chatting with your local Melbourne record store, you will hear the same refrain. This is the album where Muse embraced their inner maximalists and, more often than not, stuck the landing.