Muse 01/28/13 Oracle Arena

[El Dingo]

I'm notoriously late to appreciate 'Hip' bands. I 'discovered' The Flaming Lips 10 years after their album debut, same with Ween and Daft Punk. Muse was no exception. I always associated the name 'Muse' with a wimpy 'Lilith' girls band. I never realized they were an anthemic, near neo-revolutionary metal outfit somewhere between Iron Maiden and Pink Floyd.

The stage was partially encircled by 60+ 70" x 24" video screens that separated and combined to display images of the band or vignettes of stock tickers and newsreels. A bank of monitors above the stage raised, lowered and moved to play videos or show the band as they played crunching guitar riffs. At one point they lowered to form a pyramid around the drummer as he was portrayed "Kill Bill" style fighting off bowler-hatted silohuetes while keeping rhythm to "Uprising".

Here's someone's phone video of uprising so you get the idea:

[youtube]xFlUfCbAacM[/youtube]

Add a hundred lasers, pattern-spots, color-spots, smoke cannons and strobes and you have the basics of a Muse show.

One of the few times I walked away from a $55 ticket thinking I got quite the bargain.

The opening band was 'Band of Skulls' and they bored me. Just an FYI for fact checking later.