u/jax326

all my favorite artists are releasing music all at once so i’m just now getting around to waterparks lol. i think it’s one of their best albums. and the discourse ive read here i actually found quite surprising.
i think this album was not what a lot of fans were hoping for, but im wondering if the reason of that is actually of the quality of it, or if maybe it’s just not the style the double dare fans wanted. on the other hand, the fans who are defending the album say that waterparks are leaning into their weirder style that they’ve been doing since greatest hits, but i don’t think it’s really that either. this album definitely feels more tame to me than those last two. another noticeable thing about it is its cohesiveness. i think it has a distinct atmosphere and pattern of creative choices throughout it that they did really well. waterparks are known for making pop punk music and hyperpop music, but i don’t believe this album gives the vibe of either. like it’s definitely rock, but it’s not all just power chords, it has these more intricate, like alternative-rock-sounding riffs. sure its guitar-based, but it’s not in the same way as their og stuff at all. and as for electronic/hyperpop/hip hop elements, they’re definitely there, but the way they interact with the rock elements is different from how they did it in the past two albums. (side note: to me, greatest hits kind of thrives off of the chaos of jumping between so many different vibes, so it’s like an organized chaos. personally i feel like intellectual property had some consistency issues, probably from them making clearly radio-intended pop punk songs and sprinkling them into the album alongside stuff that sounds like a recapturing of greatest hits’ sounds, that one always felt kinda incomplete to me) in this case, everything kind of blends together with more subtlety. as for the crediting not going to the other two band members, i think that’s just a natural progression of awsten knights art. he’s always been the creative direction of the band, and musicians recording stuff entirely themselves or collaborating with people outside the band, or changing the way the process works, is nothing new to rock music.
but anyway, why i love this album is because i think it has a lot of substance to it and there are quite a few risky moves they made that i believe paid off well.
- the metal-inspired guitar chugging in better than therapy
- the conversations within the lyrics and self-as-character stuff in tracks 1-3 remind me of show tunes and manage to fit some comedy into it without taking away from the song, especially tell me why was interesting and i think it’s really cool to hear how waterparks adapts itself to that. really never heard anything quite like it.
- nobody but you sounded like rnb and stood out on the album without it feeling overstated or trying too hard.
- girls need guns having a serious and real call to action and featuring a speech from none other than awsten knight’s mom talking about women’s rights, and still fits into the album really well as a closer.
the album also seems kind of be a concept album, i heard some one describe it this way: the narrator has a near-death experience, goes to the pearly gates and asks them why people have to suffer and why we all exist, and doesn’t get an answer, suffers through an existential crisis, temporarily finds solace with a romantic partner, but becomes emotionally dependent on them before they leave, leaving the narrator even worse off, then any minute now concludes the story arc with the protagonist acknowledging the answers simply aren’t within reach, and the frustration that comes with it and hoping one day they will show themselves. overall just feels like a sincere project with a lot of passion in it.
anyway, what are y’all’s thoughts on the album now that it’s been out for a little bit, what did you like/not like about it?

i was listening through all of muses albums now that the wow! signal has been out for a while and i noticed that the 2nd law really popped out to me this time around and i feel like it has a lot of unique qualities. first off, i wanna say i can see why it’s not considered a good album, because it doesn’t function well as a cohesive, deliberate full picture like their other albums do. and the lyrics are probably some of their weakest. i think on top of this, rock listeners and muse fans as a whole didn’t appreciate this departure from their formula.

however, i feel like their work in this album still has a lot of artistic merit as they managed to try a lot of different things in one album. supremacy, panic station, and survival (+prelude) are all completely wacky from front to back. meanwhile there are dubstep/modern electronic elements in follow me and madness and isolated system, then we have unsustainable seeming to try and tie them together but it just didn’t work in the end, which might partially be because there’s also all these other comparatively grounded-sounding rock songs like animals and both of wolsenholme’s tracks. then we got big freeze, which is basically a u2 tribute, then we got explorers, which sounds like something they haven’t made before or since. overall just a scattered, out-of-balance album full of songs that feel like they’re all from different universes.

but in defense of this music, i feel like if rock music weren’t constrained to releasing things by the album, or if artists maybe had more time and less pressure to make things that fit into a specific runtime, or to deliver on expectations of what their band should sound like, i wonder if this album could’ve been better. or maybe the idea was just to big to make it work in the real world. honestly, i believe this was muse at their most inventive. Also, i think the vocals on this album are overall matt bellamy’s best ever. the buildup in madness, the final note in survival, and the entirety of big freeze, and explorers i think is really overlooked in their catalogue. i know it’s not a rock song so it’s not as popular in the fandom and its lyrics are probably on the half-baked side, but i think the instrumentals, chords and dynamics make it a very pretty song and the bridge with all the layers of vocals is one of the best bits on the album.

this one is different from drones and will of the people i think because they decided not to conform and try a whole bunch of things. a lot of it didn’t sound like muse, but it challenged what sounding like muse can mean, and i think that was really cool, even if it’s not great at being an album.