Matt Bellamy loves a heavy riff. Now, more than ever. “I definitely think a bit more metal has crept in this time,” he says of the new Muse album Will Of The People.
He’s always had it in him, as evidenced by early Muse bangers like New Born and Stockholm Syndrome, which helped make the trio one of the most successful alternative rock acts of the modern age. But with this new album, the singer/guitarist is really going for it in terms of sheer sonic weight.
Will Of The People is a head-twisting celebration of heaviness – from its opening title track to its unequivocal closing number We Are F*cking F*cked. It’s the sound of a group finding new ways to catch lightning in the bottle and hardwire galactic riffs into stadium-conquering anthems. Tracks such as Kill Or Be Killed and Won’t Stand Down live up to the metallic defiance of their titles, while You Make Me Feel Like It’s Halloween – despite being a synth-led throwback to the group’s electro influences – features the most overtly shred guitar run ever heard on a Muse album, a throwback to the 80s heyday of shred game-changers Yngwie Malmsteen and Paul Gilbert.
This is also the first Muse album on which Matt has used the famous guitar he bought in 2020 from Parisian dealer Matthieu Lucas – the 1983 Telecaster previously owned by the late Jeff Buckley. The guitar has an unusually glassy tone thanks to a slight defect which helps it shine just as spectacularly today as it did on Buckley’s classic 1994 album Grace, but when Matt plays it on this new album’s title track, it’s for colour. The heavy riffs are delivered via his Manson guitars, the brand he has sworn by since the early days of Muse, and in which he invested in 2019, becoming a majority shareholder in the company.
His long association with Manson is one of the key subjects he discusses when he talks to TG on a warm summer’s day in London. He also speaks of the unique qualities in that famous Tele and his search for the perfect fuzz pedal. And he reveals how the heaviness
