Well, I decided to get my punk ass in gear and FINALLY get around to writing some album reviews. Generally, my reviews are rock oriented... so those of you who want to do reviews of other genre, be my guest. I'm sticking to my area of expertise, thank you very much. As for the review format, It'll be a track by track review. I hate those all encompassing reviews with such a passion... they lack detail. Now, let's begin.

I picked up Muse - Origin of Symmetry one day on a trip to Virginia, back when I lived in New York. I'd been a Muse fan for about a year, and I thought it would be cool to pick up the whole album, given I'd only heard a couple of tracks off of it. Well, here goes. I'll begin by giving you a rundown of the band's lineup.

Matt Bellamy - Guitar, Piano, Keyboard, and Lead Vocals
Chris Wolstenholme - Bass and Backing Vocals
Dominic Howard - Drums and Percussion

1. New Born - Great way to start off an album, really. The song starts off with a quiet piano phrase, soon followed by Wolstenholme's bass, and then joined in by Bellamy's haunting vocals and Dom's silent drumming. About a minute into the song, everything stops, and then heavy distorted guitars and bass makes for one great riff. The song continues in this heavy fashion until the end. Awesome song, but it drags on a bit, which kinda detracted from its score. Pretty cool whammied out guitar solo. 8.5/10

2. Bliss – Ah, perennial fan-favorite… well, Muse fans anyway >_>. Not that there’s many of them, but whatever, that’s not the point. Sweeping piano-synth arpeggios, spiraling vocals and a pounding bassline make this song enviably beautiful. As a matter of fact, the lyrics are about innocence envy, isn’t that funny? Bellamy works lyrical wonders here, and his rhythm guitar in this song’s far more than decent. Beauty in simplicity. How wonderful. 9/10

3. Space Dementia – Remember all that crap about beauty in simplicity I just mentioned? Forget about it, it only applied to that song. Space Dementia is complexity at its finest. Think classical piano concerto + crazy love/hate lyrics + fuzzy super distorted super kickass submarine with nazi signals ending. You’ve got this song in a nutshell. Bellamy’s piano work shines once again. Then again, when has it not? Just a beautiful song in its entirety. 10/10

4. Hyper Music – Perennial fan favorite # 2.(There’s a fair number of them this album…) Great song, pounding bassline + Jimi influenced guitar = greatness in a can. Except without the can, just greatness. This is where Chris really starts showing some musical muscle, which he’d later be well known for. *cough*Hysteria*cough. But enough of that, I really just love this song, it’s catchy, but it does kinda get old after a while, so it’s awesome, but not that awesome. 8.5/10

5. Plug-in Baby – Ah, Plug-in Baby. Where do I begin. I guess we’ll start at the very beginning, a very good place to start. Song comes in with a kickass robotronic guitar riff, and then, bam, in with Chris’s bass AGAIN. Hooray musical muscle! The verse is relatively quiet, which is a cool contrast, and then, build-up, and BLAM! The chorus hits you full force, Bellamy wails real loud, which is a good thing. It’s a fun song to play on guitar, and for that, the score rises a bit, but it gets old sometimes. 9/10

6. Citizen Erased – Classic Muse. ‘Nuff said. It’s the only song Bellamy’s ever played with a 7-string, yes, a 7-string guitar. What does that mean? He’s reaching into the very pits of guitar hell and coming up with some demonic guitaring. It’s even tuned down to a low A (7th string is usually low B.) It’s long, and when I say long, I mean almost Stairway to Heaven long. Yep, it’s 7 minutes long. That’s pretty long. But it’s the good kind of long. It’s almost got 3 movements. When I think about it, it reminds me of a love that was never meant to be. The intro sounds kind of angry, forced(good kind of forced), and the tension builds up steadily towards the chrous. Then, everything calms down, it’s as if all the tension’s gone, in the second verse, the distortion’s gone, and Bellamy just sings softly and plays some clean guitar arpeggios, beautiful ones mind you. And then, the solo. Everything builds up again, tension, anger, passion, it’s all there, solo, third chorus, and then, wham, everything dies again, for good this time though. Some ambient piano, and some very touching, yet somewhat depressing lyrics make for a very good outro to a song. See how classic it is? I wrote a HUGE paragraph on it. Geez! 10/10 Mind you, there’s a weird little keyboard/synth part at the end that leads directly into….

7. Micro Cuts – Ooh, now THIS is a great song. It’s one of those really underrated songs that you have to listen to really hard. It’s hard to listen to though, especially since Bellamy’s earsplitting falsetto wailing is kinda the prevailing force through out this whole song. The song moves me to anger though. Channeled anger, which is good. The guitar’s awesome, bass is nothing special, but really, it doesn’t need to be. I don’t talk much about Dom’s drumming, mostly because it’s so good, it doesn’t ever need to be talked about. Great song, great song. 9.5/10

8. Screenager – Weakest song on the album in my opinion. Don’t get me wrong though. No Muse song is weak. This one’s just weak by comparison. It’s really weird. Kinda creepy. Dom uses a human bone xylophone thingy. It’s freaky. Great guitar work by Bellamy as usual. So yeah, ok song, not Muse’s best, and not one of my favorites, though fun factor in terms of playability’s a bonus. 7.5/10

9. Darkshines – Haha, this is a great song. Really funky, grooving bassline, with some funky grooving guitar supported by some funky grooving drumming. As you can tell, it’s a funky groovin’ song. Groove is good. Awesome solo too. Not much more to say though. 8/10

10. Feeling Good – AWESOME. Muse doing a cover of Nina Simone… you don’t see that everyday. It’s a cool song cause it’s all bluesy, and Bellamy sings an entire verse through a megaphone. It’s fun to see him sing it in the video and live, how he just whips out the megaphone. There’s this one performance of it that’s just priceless, he’s trying to get the megaphone out, and it won’t come out, so he’s singing into the megaphone, off-screen: “Fucking fucking fuckers fucking little fucking fuckers little fucking fuckers fucking fucking yeah!”… wonderful… XD. 8.5/10

11. Futurism(Japan only Bonus Track) – I always ask myself, WHY THE FUCK DOES JAPAN GET ALL THE GOOD BONUS TRACKS?! Well, it’s cause Japan doesn’t get singles, but whatever. Japan bonus tracks tend to rawk. This one doesn’t fail to hold up tradition, that it doesn’t. The bass is just awesome, and the guitar’s just earsplittingly sexy. Song ends on an improvy kind of vibe, which is always good. Improv > All! 9/10

12.(Track 11 outside of Japan) Megalomania – Can you say haunting? And sickeningly clever at the exact same time? I can. That’s exactly what this song is. It’s just great. Nothing better than a church organ, recorded at, duh a church, in a song, about how much the church sucks(covertly of course… >>) But Bellamy displays some of his strongest vocal muscle to date, with haunting vocals, to earsplitting falsetto, to holding a note really, REALLY, long. The song, and transversely, the album, ends on one GIGANTIC organ chord. It’s just so final. It’s the greatest closer song I’ve heard on a Muse album, with Ruled By Secrecy a close second, but that’s not the point. AWESOMENESS! 10/10

Well, that just about wraps things up. You might notice I used the word awesome a lot… that’s because this album’s just awesome like that. I give the album on average, in its entirety, because flow isn’t all that important in this album for some reason, an 8.9 out of 10, which I think is pretty damn good. If one day, you’re in a record store and you see this CD, buy it. If you like rock, chances are you won’t regret it. Trust me.