United States of Eurasia

You and me fall in line
To be punished for unproven crimes!
And we know that there is no one we can trust; 
Our ancient heroes, they are turning to dust!

And these wars, they can't be won
Does anyone know or care how they begun?
They just promise to go on 
And on and on

This is just fantastic. One of my major favourite bands (Green Day) released their new album in May and now another of my major favourite band (Muse) is releasing theirs in September :) "The Resistance" has already being dubbed to be the finest album that Muse will ever produce. Given Matt Bellamy's musical inclination and Muse's creative tendencies to mix rock and classical music together, they are now bringing rock music to a level higher - an album with a kaleidoscopic combination of rock, orchestra and opera together for a grandeur experiment.

Matt Bellamy and co. has never been straightforward with their fans..haha. Thanks to Muse's love for conspiracies, they always present opportunities for their fans to interact and obtain their music through cryptic puzzles. One of the songs in the album, "United States of Eurasia" is released in such a way. Six different USB keys were distributed around in 6 cities around the world- Paris, Berlin, Dubai, Moscow, Tokyo and Hong Kong and fans are invited to search for the "agent" that hold these USB keys. Each of these cities are coded as a "station", similar to the concept found in Lost..lol. That is not the only thing to do because fans later have to solve a series of puzzles after entering the code found in the USB key onto the website. These puzzles include anagrams and numerical sequences. For every station that is unlocked, Muse will release a portion of the song. All six parts will be combined as a clip and released the moment after all 6 stations are unlocked.

A seventh station in New York was shown and the final puzzle was released for the fans to solve, with the tagline that US of America must recognise US of Eurasia in order for the outro (Collateral Damage) be released. A time limit was also given for that "recognition". On 21st July, USE + Collateral Damage was released as one single track which could be downloaded free from the website. This is awesome..we get to have a first hand experience on one of the songs from the new album!

There are lots to comment on Muse's new single song. Firstly, it's a super way of releasing the song..haha. The title of course, carries lots of connotations with the most obvious ones being a reference to the superstate of Eurasia in George Orwell's "1984", which happens to be a rival to Big Brother's Oceania. The lyrics drew heavy pointers from 1984 too, with references to thoughtcrime, the never-ending war theory from Goldstein's manual and the the decimation of Rutherford, Aaronson and Jones. I absolutely loved these pointers to 1984 as these are sort of tributes to George Orwell himself.

Musically wise, the style of USE is reminiscent of Queen and its structure is similar to Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody". I've always enjoyed piano intros in rock music and then followed by heavy electric guitar accompaniment later. The strings accompaniment in USE enriches the track in a way that it makes it grander than usual. The outro (Collateral Damage) is Matt's rendition of Chopin's Nocturne Op.9 No.2. It's a brilliant transition from USE at the end, sort of a reminder of the piano solo at "Butterflies and Hurricanes". I got so inspired by the outro that I've decided to make Nocturne Op.9 No.2 as my next piano piece to master..lol. Afterall, Chopin is also one of my favourite piano composers.

Ahhhhhh..I can't wait for September 14 to come!! It'll be the same feeling of anticipation when I waited for 21st century breakdown..lol. I'm looking forward to hear Exogenesis actually. According to Matt, it's a 15 minute space rock orchestra..hehe. I'm indeed curious to see how it'll turn out especially when it's played life. Till then, we can only wait for "The Resistance".