As ridiculously ostentatious and showy as ever, Muse are the only band in the world able to take their flamboyant nature and run with it throughout the course of their entire musical career. Since their debut, they’ve progressively amped up their ostentatious delivery to epic proportions, culminating in third album Absolution, the preceding release to Black Holes and Revelations.

On initial inspection, it may appear that Black Holes and Revelations harks back to the prog elements best sampled on the group’s second album, Origin of Symmetry. In lieu of the call of brilliant pop songs found on Absolution, that album was a true ‘journey’. Black Holes and Revelations bridges the gap between the two albums, coming on very much like a singular piece (as per Origin of Symmetry), but with some cracking individual moments akin to its predecessor.

As such, opener “Take a Bow” is the slow-build as vocalist Matt Bellamy careens around the stratosphere in his best Freddie Mercury impression, leading into the awesome pop of “Starlight” and the falsetto funk of single “Supermassive Black Hole”. Both are just fabulous pop songs, delivered with immediacy at their core but with great hooks that can’t help but bring you back to them time and time again.

Similarly, mid-album cut “Soldier’s Poem” acts as a tension-builder, leading into the ace trio of monster ballad “Invisible”, then the aggressive one-two punch of “Assassin” and sure-fire winner “Exo-Politics”. These two tracks in particular mark a remarkable turning point for Black Holes and Revelations, as the album then proceeds to close out with one killer song after another. The big difference between Black Holes and Revelations and Absolution is in the consistency – like Origin of Symmetry, there’s a better flow to this album and a stronger finish compacts it into a cohesive whole.

It ends with “Knights of Cydonia”, a whopping six-minute long beast that travels from slow-build to epic conclusion around a spaghetti western-like guitar line from Bellamy. It’s simultaneously fascinating and more than a little enveloping – the thing that Muse most certainly have in their favour is that they sound like no-one else out there, and they’re prepared to be bombastic, and extreme, and revel in their own over-the-top nature.