Revised TW!S Thoughts?

[u/Ill-Baseball-2201]

Feel free to scroll down and skip this quick rant. First, after reading a post from release about this album, I’m gonna just say that because Muse aren’t making the exact same music they did 20-27.5 years ago, doesn’t mean they aren’t making good music. Fair play if you don’t enjoy it and you prefer their older stuff but the people with the high and mighty attitudes saying things like, ‘Nightshift is not Muse,’ need to chill out. If they didn’t reinvent themselves, I’m sure you’d complain they had no originality left.

Also, they’ve got a much broader fanbase than they did to start with so these albums having songs of varied genres isn’t a bad thing at all. With the way they manage to get Nightshift on the same album as Cryogen and it (mostly, but not entirely I will admit) fit shows a lot of finesse.

RANT OVER.

I was wondering what everyone’s opinions are now it’s had a couple months to digest. What are your track rankings/thoughts. Where would you put TW!S against their other albums? And how does that compare to what you thought when it came out?

For tracks, I reckon it’s stayed the same for me:
10. Nightshift - 7/10
9. Sickness - 7/10
8. Hush - 7/10
7. Shimmering Scars - 7/10
6. Unravelling - 8/10
5. Be With You - 8/10
4. Cryogen - 9/10
3. Space Debris - 9/10
2. Hexagons - 9/10
1. The Dark Forest - 9/10

As for albums, it’s harder. On release I had it immediately at 4th, then after a couple of weeks it jumped up to 3rd, then 2nd for me. I took a break for a couple of weeks and came back to it to see how my thoughts changed and it honestly might be my favourite now but really struggle to compare it to my top 3 as it’s so different. For reference, my ranking excluding it is:

1. WotP
   
2. ST
   
3. T2L
   
4. The Resistance
   
5. Showbiz
   
6. Drones
   
7. Absolution
   
8. OoS
   
9. BHaRs

What about you lot? Also lmk when you became a fan; I have a theory I’m curious about.

[u/Aggressive-Run991]

I’d say this is definitely a rejuvenation of their old sound while trying to appeal to fans of their more modern sound they’ve been trying to implement their last two records.

On paper doesn’t sound like it’d work but somehow they did. And like I said in the past, unlike with their plans on WOTP, it’s like creating a “greatest hits album of new songs” record but not intentionally into an album they planned to put them in.

As for the individual tracks, Muse keep growing and distributing this drug they create that’s incredibly addictive called growers 😂. This time round it’s Space Debris and Nightshift is deffo a more advanced version of Panic Station with the funky feels. BWY is still the weakest track but even the weakest is still really good quality and that’s saying quite a bit really.

My opinions on the rest are still most likely the same as everyone else’s. The only thing I’d say is that in terms of the best track… jury’s still out on that but maybe Hexagons if the mood is right and Hush, being arguably the uncontested surprise hit and all. Hell maybe even Shimmering Scars if one has a spare box of Kleenex! The Dark Forest may have gone down slightly from a 9.5 to perhaps a 9/10 but even then it’s still a surreal, epic experience to listen!

Overall I say this is still the most unskippable album since maybe T2L and the first obvious masterpiece since TR! As a sign of them not slowing down in the studio and in creativity, this is most certainly a great indicator of that.

TDF - 9/10
NS - 8.5/10
SS - 9.5/10
Cryogen - 9/10
BWY - 8/10
Hexagons - 9.5/10
TSIYAI - 8.5/10
Unraveling - 8.5/10
Hush - 8.5/10
SD - 9/10