Troubled by dystopian nightmares and the revolutionary fervour that only love can inspire, Muse’s fifth studio album, 2009’s The Resistance, found the group finishing the decade on an operatic high with a proggy fusion of stadium-sized rock riffs, audacious symphonic suites and electronic experimentation. Exploring timely themes of government control, societal unrest and the struggle against oppression, Muse’s frontman, Matt Bellamy, invented a fictional autocracy to use as a stand-in for his attacks on the crumbling façade of democracy in the UK.
Giving voice to the nation’s growing unease, Bellamy’s lyrics were awash with paranoia and defiance, his bandmates joining him on a sprawling detour into an Orwellian hellscape that mirrored society’s woes. “I think in England people have woken up to the fact that we don’t have a democracy anymore,” the singer said, “and our parliamentary system is completely out of date and the news media is particularly skewed.” With songs that kicked against brainwashing and stoked the flames of populist revolt, The Resistance was Muse at their most incendiary.
Here, then, is the story behind the making of The Resistance, exploring why Muse’s powerful call to action resonated in a world where peace and freedom were increasingly under threat.
Listen to ‘The Resistance’ here.
The backstory: “We had absolutely no outside influences at all”
Within a year of completing their fourth studio album, Black Holes And Revelations, Matt Bellamy had already began speculating about what the band might do next. Speaking to both Australia’s Triple J radio station and French music publication Rock Mag, he hinted at a wish to have Muse be more progressive, building classical piano compositions into lengthy symphonies with a full orchestra, or even branching out into dance music and electronica. Clearly fed up with the political situation in the UK, Bellamy also sought a change of scene. And so, in a burst of wanderlust, he bought himself a villa near Lake Como, in North Italy.
Fleeing his country of birth to soak up the Lombardy sun, Bellamy busied himself by converting the guest bedroom suite into a recording studio, and soon settled into his new life as an émigré. Dating back to the 1820s, the villa he now called home had once been owned by opera composer Vincenzo Bellini, and Bellamy was convinced that Bellini’s spirit lingered within the building.
“I’m trying to trace his ghost right now to help me write songs,” he told Q magazine. “I do this late at night, 3am. I turn the lights down low and start playing his songs on the piano in the hope of making contact.” Bellamy never disclosed whether these late-night séances resulted in any communions with the departed Bellini, but, judging by the operatic fare that followed, it would hardly be a surprise if they did.
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Around the same time, Bellamy began re-reading Nineteen Eighty-Four and started pondering the ways in which George Orwell’s dystopian future could become a reality. Also of influence was Zbigniew Brzezinski’s book The Grand Chessboard, a geostrategic thesis on US foreign policy that Bellamy interpreted as a harbinger of global calamity. “It basically talks about how America – in order to ensure peace in the world – needs to stop Eurasia from unifying,” Bellamy told BBC Radio 1’s Zane Lowe, “because the moment Eurasia unifies there’ll be a world war between America and Eurasia.” It was at this moment that the seeds of The Resistance were sown, as Bellamy began mapping out a futuristic fable of transcontinental chaos.
Meanwhile, Bellamy’s bandmates, bassist Chris Wolstenholme and drummer Dom Howard, agreed with their frontman that Muse were ready to produce themselves. “We wanted to work in a home studio so we had no pressures of time,” Bellamy later said. “We had absolutely no outside influences at all: no producer, no record company, no management, nothing. We were left to our own devices, to do our own ideas.”
The recording: “This time we were very relaxed”
Free from expectations, all three members of Muse convened at Bellamy’s home studio, nicknamed Studio Bellini, to record what would become The Resistance (strings were added later, at Milan’s Officine Meccaniche Studios). The songs Bellamy had written offered Muse the chance to embrace their more grandiose, prog-inspired impulses. From flexing Bellamy’s classical-piano aspirations to dabbling in drum machines and contemporary R&B-style grooves, nothing was off the table. “In comparison to the last album, this time we were very relaxed,” drummer Dom Howard said. “I think that being in a more relaxed environment, it seemed to help.”
Central to the album was Bellamy’s take on the United States Of Eurasia, a new superpower rising up to challenge US supremacy but inadvertently sparking a wave of tyranny and warfare around the globe. Trading in broader social critiques about totalitarian control, crackdowns on public protest and brainwashing of the masses, the song United States Of Eurasia was inspired by classical pianist Sergei Rachmaninoff, and gleefully tapped into the same operatic influences that Queen had drawn upon for Bohemian Rhapsody. “Every time we heard it, we were laughing,” Bellamy told NME. “The song’s supposed to have an emotional meaning, after all, so can we let this epic Queen-like chord change be in it? In the end we thought, Fuck it! We love it, it’s in!”
