Dangling Tiny Carrots With Muse

Ever since Muse finished their extensive touring for 2006’s critically acclaimed Black Holes & Revelations, fans have been eagerly anticipating new material from the band. After some scarce details here and there, Muse confirmed the title and release date for their fifth album: The Resistance, set for release on September 14. The band announced the tracklist on Twitter, much to the fans’ delight, seeing as the titles have the sort of over-the-top tone that you can expect from the band:

1.Uprising
2. Resistance
3. Undisclosed Desires
4. United States Of Eurasia (+ Collateral Damage)
5. Guiding Light
6. Unnatural Selection
7. MK Ultra
8. I Belong To You (+ Mon Cœur S’ouvre À Ta Voix)
9. Exogenesis: Symphony Part I (Overture)
10. Exogenesis: Symphony Part II (Cross Pollination)
11. Exogenesis: Symphony Part III (Redemption)

As if titles like United States Of Eurasia didn’t sound exaggerated enough to the outsider, the non-fans are probably wondering who the fuck is pretentious enough to put a three-part symphony called Exogenesis on their album. And is that a song title in French? At any rate, this is business as usual for Muse: with each album they released, the band went further down the path of progressive rock, knowing how to be just the right amount of overblown.

Frontman Matt Bellamy promised this three-part symphonic piece years ago, but claimed that he never had a chance to actually put it in one of their albums – needless to say, seeing Exogenesis on the tracklist caused a major fangasm all over the world (but mostly in Europe). And Muse clearly knows just how obsessed and numerous their fans are in Europe, seeing the first step of their promotion for the new album.

A few days ago, a new site was launched. The seemingly nonsensical text on the front page could only mean that some sort of riddle solving was on the way, seeing as the band has already shown their love for anagrams and numerical puzzles in the past. This time, however, Muse took a few lessons from NIN and got the fans involved directly, getting them off their asses – a admirable feat anywhere these days. The map on the Ununited States of Eurasia page points to six cities – at first, nobody had any idea what they meant. But, on July 14 the first “mission” was posted: through a sound file with coordinates and a cryptic text, fans were able to find out that someone in Paris would have to find a certain “agent” at a specific location, holding a specific book, and ask him for a USB key. This USB key would contain a code to be entered online, unlocking the next phase. Of course, a handful of Parisians surrounded the guy at said locale, and after a bit of chaos, the key was attained.

But that wasn’t enough, no. Muse made their fans work even harder for some sort of reward: with the promise of an audio sample from the album, fans were prompted to solve 50 anagrams, as quickly as possible – and quick it was, as about an hour later, all 50 anagrams pointing to locations and companies in Europe (e.g.: “necrosis” was an anagram for “ericsson”) were solved. [The only one I could solve was that "lone" was an anagram for "noel," but someone already did that before me]. As promised, a 30-second clip of United States Of Eurasia was posted, as were the next clues to attain an USB key, this time in Berlin, which would then unlock the next series of puzzles. So it went, and later that day, another 30-second clip was posted.

[UPDATE: Clip replaced - evidently the song we posted was this new clip mixed with an older (and rather terrible) Muse song. Oops.]

There are still 4 phases left, and the 30,000+ fans registered at that website seem pretty eager to solve them, in order to get another ridiculously small tease of the album.

At least the fan who finds the USB key gets free tickets.