Muse - The Wow! Signal

Muse have spent three decades turning anxiety into arena-sized spectacle, whether the target was surveillance, war, or the algorithm. The WOW! Signal, their tenth studio album, points that same instinct at the stars. The title comes from the real 1977 radio signal that briefly had astronomers wondering if they'd picked up a transmission from intelligent life, and the album builds an entire world around that moment of cosmic uncertainty: existential dread shading into genuine hope, and the strange comfort of imagining we're not alone out here.

Working with producer Dan Lancaster, who's spent recent years behind the boards for Bring Me the Horizon and Don Broco and has toured with Muse since 2022, Matt Bellamy pushes the band further into electronic territory than they've gone in years. Lead single "Unravelling" set the tone, stacking djent riffs and EDM synths under Bellamy's operatic vocal delivery, while "Be With You" leans further into that electronic experimentation, all insatiable curiosity and restless production choices. A collaboration with Ellie Goulding on "Hush" brings a different texture into the mix, softening the album's heavier moments without losing its widescreen ambition.

It's an album that sounds like a band still chasing bigger questions rather than repeating old answers, maximalist and stadium ready while genuinely curious about where the songwriting can go next.

This pressing arrives on galaxy marble red and gray vinyl, a fitting match for a record that spends its entire runtime staring up at the sky and wondering what might be staring back.