"Pretty much every song on 'The 2nd Law' sounds like a concept track, based around re-imagining a genre. This is less an album, and more like a mixtape filled with mini meditations of musical movements.
It’s like they had some rapid-fire brainstormed ideas for the concept of the album, and threw it all in there for Generation: I Like a Bit of Everything, I Do. There’s the prog-lounge ‘Animals’ which goes a bit Jeff Beck. The haha-we-trolled-everyone-on-the-internet-LOLZ ‘Unsustainable’ with its deliriously hideous Skrillex + strings (Stringexx?). ‘Madness’ is a Gaga muh-muh-ma-ing sci-fi re-write of Limp Bizkit/George Michael’s ‘Faith’. There’s the ‘Can’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough’ Belgian-boyband-funk of ‘Panic Station’, which goes a bit Darkness prancing around on a lit-up disco-floor to Abba (you can imagine Russell Brand walking onstage to this tune looking all presidential and cod-serious). Meanwhile, ‘Save Me’ sounds exactly like one of those songs when the other band members who’ve never really sung before, step in and sing a number... actually, it’s quite good. ‘Liquid State’ on the other-hand sounds exactly like Three Colours Red/every band playing in Camden in the post Brit-rock years...
The most disappointing thing about this sixth Muse longplayer... is that the best track on it - a swirling piece of Danny Elfman/Tim Burton inspired post-dubstep with Chris Morris-esque samples - ‘Isolated System’ - is buried at the end of a record that knows that it really wants The Haters to hate it (Hate this and I’ll Love You... anyone?). This is Muse not so much defying the boundaries of all the music that has come before it, they are simply playing hard to 'get' and pushing the rest of you away. It's a marvellous misdirection..." - Drowned In Sound
Compact Disc pressing
Tracklist:
1. Supremacy
2. Madness
3. Panic Station
4. Prelude
5. Survival
6. Follow Me
7. Animals
8. Explorers
9. Big Freeze
10. Save Me
11. Liquid State
12. The 2nd Law: Unsustainable
13. The 2nd Law: Isolated System
