As a kid who grew up with her nose stuck to the TV screen I remember well when Muse popped up on MTV in 2001. I remember it so well that I even know that I wrote to my brother to find and bring me from abroad some of their songs. I got the whole “Origin of Symmetry” album. I was absolutely fascinated by their song “Bliss” and the video for it. Somehow, when they visited Romania years ago, I skipped their concert, probably because I was still living on pretzels and yogurt for my student lunch break. Well, 15 years later, and after the band became one of the most successful and interesting rock bands you can find in the mainstream, I finally ended up seeing them live.

The ticket was bought months ago. The administrative parts of the concert worked smoothly. And then they started playing. One thing I like about them is their energy and something that I’d dare to call their trademark: they have a specific sound that makes you know from the first sound that it is Muse you are listening to.

The concert started with “Drones” when on the big screen above the stage one could read the lyrics of the song. Which are not exactly easy to take in: “My mother, my father / My sister and my brother / My son and my daughter / Killed by drones”. Then the energy broke loose with “Psycho” which is a quite rhythmic song, good for jumping up and down, feel the rock vibes and enjoy some good music. Add to that a light show and the thrill of a rock concert and you have a perfect setting. With a small exception: I’ve never seen a more passive audience in my life. I know the rules are: sitting means we can’t stand but it’s a rock concert!!! In an over-civilized country. How can you watch Muse while sitting, people? Get up and jump. I wonder if they would interrupt the concert if people were actually standing up? I saw some shy attempts here and there but they calmed down fast. And the people in front of the stage weren’t too active either. But still, it’s cruel to have to sit at such an event.

Going back to enjoying the music, the concert went on with “Reapers”. “Plug in Baby” was the first old song (from 2001) that the band played, making the audience be a bit more cheerful. By that time I actually gave up being disappointed by the audience’s reaction and I just tried to enjoy the music and take in as many good vibes as possible. “Dead Inside” is a song from their latest album (“Drones”, out 2015) that I like a lot. So I was super happy to hear it. It sounds really good live and it makes me want to dance.

I won’t go through all the songs but here are some highlights and things I liked. Good light show, the spinning stage made it even more fun to watch, super nice interaction with the audience, the guys are professional and talented. They did a very nice shift in between new and old songs, running through almost all their hits. Matthew Bellamy showed everybody that he can sing, play the guitar and thrill the audience by playing the piano (especially with the cover of “Feeling Good”).

“Time is Running Out” was probably my favourite song of the evening. I wanted them to play “Resistance” but they didn’t. I had a flashback to one year ago and I woke up in the middle of my master’s thesis all over again when they played “Uprising”, which I so nicely sampled for my narrative analysis. Too bad the giant teddybears weren’t there too to freak out the audience a bit. However they did have a big inflatable plane… Which kinda brought a shiver down my spine. Add to that some really post-apocalyptic sounds every now and then and you get a perfect war-scenery, kinda like the one you see on TV these days when they report about Syria. So here I am again linking what I like with what I work with. But Muse, just like other artists, give me a very good reason to do that, if you do not believe me just listen to “The Globalist”, they included it in the setlist yesterday as well. The concert ended with “Knights of Cydonia”, a very subtle way (or not) to tell the audience to go get a life as no one else will do that for them.

On the whole, this was not a rock concert where you go and listen to power ballads and how you should take life as a rollercoaster ride, get drunk and have fun. Besides the energy that I already mentioned, the rock sound given by the riffs, Muse is another band that seems to want to make its audience think, not just enjoy. Or at least this is what it seemed like to me.