Kerrang - Muse at The Astoria in London (June 6 2000)

Inspirational dynamism from the Teignmouth trio. Grim. That's the word that springs to mind. You spin the radio dial and out it comes: the lackadaisical acoustic tickles, the morose bedsit melodrama of the unfolding falsetto hand-wringing and the reverberating, echo-drenched undercurrent of doom. 'Unintended' is undeniably brilliant if you're feeling a bit lovelorn and post-millennial, but you couldn't really imagine spending an entire evening in the company of Muse. Surely, your fragile rock psyche couldn't take a whole night of purposefully stylised melancholia. You couldn't really be more wrong. Tonight, Muse are simply magnificent. They don't just sparkle; they shine like a thousand midsummer suns. When gentle seduction is called for, they captivate with an almost imperceptible lightness of touch. And when orgasmic rock crescendos are the only thing left to satisfy an audience taken to the very brink of emotional nirvana, they budgeon with a crushing sonic ferocity that most metal bands would kill for. The ability to hold an audience in the palm of your hand and manipulate their collective emotions like a seasoned puppeteer is an extremely rare talent indeed. Very few performers have ever acquired such a skill, but Matt Bellamy is positively riddled with it tonight. The sheer brooding desperation if his extraordinarily evocative vocal performance allied to his seemingly haphazard, yet perpetually on-the-button guitar slashing sucks the audience irresistibly into the very heart of such screaming sonic supernovas as 'New Born', 'Sober' and 'Fillip'. Yet it's the rather more reserved and mannered material that will ultimately earn the boy Bellamy his inevitable Caribbean tax haven; 'Sunburn' is a full-blown knicker-stripper; a sultry, seductive serenade worthy of an excessively oily Bryan Ferry on heat, while 'Uno' tangos like Rudolph Valentino on industrial-strength Viagra. Hell, even the pathetically trembling bottom lip of 'Unintended' sounds heroic when presented in the context of a full-tilt live performance. It's not just the fact that Muse trash their gear with alarming frequency that draws surprising comparisons to the Jimi Hendrix Experience - the trio's ensemble interplay is nothing short of electrifying too. Many more gigs like this and people will be calling Radiohead "that band that sound a bit like Muse". Ian Frontman

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