The Final Say #1 - MUSE - H.E.R.P.E.S.

5 years ago, something struck the music industry across the face like Chuck Norris backhanding a dog that had ducked to avoid being the one to save a dolphin that had been shot out of a cannon at a high velocity towards a wall and would surely die unless the dog stood in the way and it didn't and and thus the dog had displayed a sign of cowardice and, as you may know, Chuck Norris is against cowardice.

5 years ago, Muse released their second album. Here, MFD brings you the ultimate analysis of an album that shaped the way rock music fans worldwide view global politics.

In 1995, inspired by the death of Kurt Cobain, Craig Bellamy, his sister Chrissie and Dom 'Leather' Howard played their first show at a pub in Swansea. The resulting recordings, "Showbiz", were released on four cassette tapes between 1997 and 2000.

When asked why, drummer Dom claims "It was Craig's idea."

Craig himself has very little to say about the band's early years. "What with the new Blu-Ray recording device just being released onto the market by the wonderful IBM corporation, we felt we had to market our brand as a niche. Our avowed target audience was that of pretentious twats; mainly within the socio-economic groups D-A. Chrissie herself felt that our first product was not iconic enough, and so we met in The Swansea Arms with the marketing objective of producing something with a USP that stood out. It was around that time that I first met David Icke. I was pissed, and Ickey (*colloquialism - Ed) was spouting some retro lizard king thing which I really could identify with - Kasabian's "Empire" had just come out, and it was such an empire record that I wanted to produce a live sound that emulated kosmiche sounds without the kitsch, that could emit the brown note and that could macro-ionise sub-alpha waves within the thorax of at least one mating slug. That, for us, was the aim of this session. What Ickey said just clicked. After that, we got offered $3.4bn to do Glasto but yeah, turned it down. We're noones bitch. Everyone is Muse's bitch. Instead, we played the Kerrang! awards - or rather, we did this live broadcast simulcasted from Sandi Thom's basement in Zurich. That was awesome. I think we toasted some vampire bats that carried neo-scatological rabies that night, just from the trombone section in "Absolution". This was around the time the third tape came out, on a limited edition of 666, 666, 666 copies across the world," he told GQ in April.

You might be forgiven, then, for thinking that a second live album, released in 2 different formats, is a bit pretentious on Muse's part. Not so. Imagine SOMA of sunn o))), Khanate and Mayhem on ketamine wearing day-glo Casette Playa ear rings, humping Euronymous' corpse dressed up as a pantomime horse, and you get Xasthur. Bitch, this ain't Xasthur. This is MUSE. This is conceptual art, rather than 'just music'. And this is the future.

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