Muse are not cool. For a minute on leaving the tube station I did think they'd broadened their appeal quite dramatically before realising that a fair section of the people around me were heading to Giants of Lovers Rock show also at the O2 complex last night. But no, their audience, judging by those heading for the main arena, are a fairly even split between hyper-mainstream V Festival demographic and slightly misshapen indie/goth kids, not really much more rock'n'roll in demeanour than, say, a Coldplay crowd, but very dedicated.
This isn't meant pejoratively, not at all. It's just that compared to their more dour musical cousins Radiohead, or hipper, younger bands, Muse are never taken seriously, never given that cachet of being more than just a rock band. And it has to be said that this is quite understandable when you see them in action. From the moment they took the stage, red lights strobing through the crowd, screens flickering with dystopian imagery, totalitarian prog-rock chords blaring, they were deeply silly.
“Welcome to the technological paradise,” said a wilfully synthetic female voiceover as part of the intro; this was clearly intended satirically, but the irony was clanging, because from the stupendously big dubstep-rock riffs that immediately followed onwards, Muse served as a brilliant advert for the late capitalist technological overload that their whole output has been dedicated to raising alarms about. Indeed, had a 1980s science fiction visionary had the will and resources to create a 21st-century band, Muse would have been the result – the ideal house band for a Blade Runner show.
There was even something android-like about the band's leader Matt Bellamy as they plunged in to new album opener “Supremacy”. Looking down from the Arena's seats, it became clear how perfectly sculpted he is to be at the heart of a light show. The curiously gelled hair which he has always rocked exactly set off his angular face and patterened suit, and made him an automatic focus among the dancing spotlights. His wailing voice, too, which was often barely distinguishable from his guitar tone, had something of the cyborg about it. His robo-rockstar act was all the odder given the ordinariness of his bandmates, Chris Wolstenholme in plain white T-shirt and Dom Howard looking not unlike Super Hans from Peep Show.
Then, after a deftly delivered coda of Led Zeppelin showboating, the mothership came down. A huge scaffold of screens in various pyramid and inverted pyramid form hovered over the stage, and the barrage of images started. Again, it was a 1980s vision of the future, rendered futuristically: incredible detail, mindblowing complexity, but somehow Max Headroom-ish. But then, everything about Muse borrows from the past shamelessly but brilliantly: glaring chunks of both “Don't Stop Me Now” and “Bohemian Rhapsody” in “Explorers”, bits of Chili Peppers funk-rock in “Supermassive Black Hole” and “Panic Station”, the complete works of Vince Clarke in “Undisclosed Desires”, all twisted into something unmistakeably Muse.
Through all this, the visuals flashing across the screens told us in no uncertain terms: bankers are bad, yeah. The world is in crisis, yeah? Encroaching chaos, yeah? Technology is a threat, yeah? There's a lot of surveillance, yeah? But it made it all look fun, just as Bellamy's lyrical vision has always made paranoia, existential vertigo and societal meltdown sound exciting. Muse are the ultimate Hollywood blockbuster band, the Society of the Spectacle made flesh, so when 50,000 people bellowed along with “Knights of Cydonia” “we will fight for our rights”, it was questionable whether they really cared about the erosion of their own rights to living wages and universal healthcare any more than sympathising with the Rebel Alliance in Star Wars makes someone into an anti-establishment firebrand, but my God it looked and sounded impressive. So no, not cool, not cool at all, but as an exemplary expression of everything they rail against, Muse are mindbogglingly good.