I’m sitting in the office, gazing intently out of the wall-to-wall windows, completely absorbed in a conversation with Muse bassist Chris Wolstenhome. The band released "Black Holes and Revelations" on July 11, their fourth and most progressive album to date, which mixes the orchestral force of Queen and the ramblings of Radiohead with their own heavy riff-laden madness. A forty-five minute interview feels more like five as we talk about the band’s history growing up together, what it took to make this album and the end of the world. Outside, the windows display almost a birds-eye view of an industrialized parking structure, cast in a stoic rigidity, and I wonder what it might feel like to have the sky crashing down on us right at that minute.
Black Holes and Revelations is the most dramatic, progressive work we’ve heard from you yet. What went into the creative process of writing the material?
When we were making the album I don’t think either of us thought about anything else but. You find yourself getting really heavily involved in it, so much that you can get detached from the world. The place we recorded in France was a million miles away from nowhere, right in the middle of the countryside, with no TVs and no phones. It’s a good environment to be in when you want to be creative, there’s no distractions. But then you come out of the studio and you find the world’s changed.
Were you shocked by what was going on in the world when you finally got out?
I can’t remember what was going on in that point in time, but I’m sure it wasn’t good.
What are you the most paranoid about in the modern world?
Mistrust of governments. It’s something I never thought about four years ago. I was willing to go along and accept that life was great and everything was running smoothly, that the people running our governments were doing their jobs properly. Maybe things aren’t as bad as we all think they are but when you switch on the news it looks like the world is in a pretty bad way in the minute. You can always imagine that the end of the world is coming.
Speaking of apocalypse, I heard about your recent incident with – was it a tsunami prophesized to hit Manhattan?
Someone sent us a link to this website. Some French guy who used to work for NASA predicted this huge tsunami was going to hit the East coast on May 25. There’s a few things in there that made sense, and we kind of almost believed it for a minute and got a bit paranoid. It ended up that May 25 was the day we flew back home. We had to do an interview for some magazine in NY so we decided to do it in a chopper for a bit of a laugh. Obviously, it didn’t happen.
I find a lot of paranormal references in your music. Where does this fascination come from?
I think there’s so many ideas of what else is out there. I’m pretty sure there is something, whether it’s spiritual or alien. My grandfather was a medium and he would supposedly get messages from the dead. I was brought up in that whole thing so I always believed it or wanted to believe it. We’ll all find out one day, or not.
How do you feel having the number one album in the U.K.?
It’s just great. It’s always nice when an album does well. Everything we’ve done has been this steady upward curve. It’s actually stayed at number one for a second week! It shows that the fan base is definitely growing.
Especially in the club scene I’ve noticed. This album has so much of a dance element in it. When did you decide to switch gears from such a somber mood?
We wanted to make music that was more uplifting, and it happened organically. Absolution was a very dark album lyrically and musically. On this album there’s still dark lyrical content but with the music in general we wanted to do something more uplifting, something you can dance to. Dance music in the last 10 or 20 years hasn’t been associated with guitar music and we wanted to change that.
But the instrumentality has also gotten a lot heavier, more orchestral.
We wanted to make sure that every song on the album was different than we had done before. It’s almost like every time one song finishes and the next one starts it’s always a little bit of a shock or surprise. I think it’s cool because somehow the album still holds itself together. You’ve got “Supermassive Black Hole” which is obviously going down a slightly more R&B root and you’ve got songs like “Asassin” which are almost like a lightning bolt, then “Knights of Cydonia” which could be a score of a Western film.
What is your personal favorite Muse song?
I would have to say “Knights of Cydonia,” purely because there’s so much in it. It starts with that spaghetti western feel, and it’s influenced by ‘50s stuff as well, and the space rock element of the early ‘60s. Then it breaks into that big vocal scene which is very ‘70s and finishes off with a cracking riff. It takes you through 40 years of rock history in six minutes.
My personal favorite would have to be the opening track, “Take A Bow.”
It’s strange how that track works, it’s based on a series of key changes and every time it changes key you can tell it’s building up to this climax and you think it’s going to happen, but it doesn’t. Then all of a sudden at the end it’s this great big orgasm!
Like a “Revelation” in itself?
Exactly.
What has been your personal revelation in making this album?
When you make an album it’s a bit of a documentation of where you are in that particular moment in time. It changes and grows. I think we’ve all become very aware of how important this band is to all of us and how important as people we are to each other. We realize what great position we’re all in and how lucky we are to be doing what we’re doing.
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