When UK rock icons Muse released their latest material, off their soon-to-be released album 2nd Law, many fans all over the world were gutted to see that their favourite band had decided to venture down the infamous dubstep path. It has now been revealed, once again to the detriment of diehard Muse fans, that Skrillex was a major influence for the band.
Skrillex for a long time now has been rubbing fans of rock the wrong way, given the current crazy surrounding dupstep in the mainstream media – a movement championed by the Prince of Dubstep himself, and also after being included in the top 100 guitarists of all time. Though Muse have seen the producer in a different light following a live performance that members Dominic Howard and Matt Bellamy attended prior to the writing process in Camden.
In a recent interview with NME, the two confessed just how much of an impact the DJ had on them. “We went to see Skrillex in Camden around October. We went, ‘F**k, it’s so heavy’, loved it,” Howard stated, “It was like a full metal gig: they had the circles of death and people were moshing, I hadn’t seen a reaction like that to electronic music before. We took inspiration and came up with Unsustainable.” Unsustainable is the first taste off the new release.
Vocalist Bellamy also commented on how he was affected by the experience, “The mosh pit has moved from guitars and gone towards the laptop, so with that song we’re trying to see if we can challenge the laptop. We created something that was dubsteppy but we wanted to see if we could do it with real instruments…We wanted to ask, ‘Can rock bands compete with what these guys are doing?’.”
So it appears that the tables have turned, no longer are DJ’s chasing the same impact as bands, but in fact the opposite. Dark, dark days for rock. Muse have also been composing music on an Olmypic scale, recently releasing Survival, the theme song to the 2012 London Games. 2nd Law will be officially released worldwide September 17; will you still be interested knowing that Skrillex’s fingerprints will be all over it?
