The #WillOfThePeople tour comes to Europe Summer 2023 with special guests @royalblooduk
Tickets for most dates are on sale Friday 10am local, French shows go on sale Thursday 22nd at 10am local. pic.twitter.com/XvdNv1gFyL

— muse (@muse) September 12, 2022

The band released their 9^th LP, Will Of The People, a few weeks back and wow… what an experience that album is. Regardless of how on board you are of Muse’s trademark bombast, it’s undeniable that the album takes every conceivable dial and turns it as far as it’ll go – sometimes to its detriment. In an attempt to keep up with the current musical landscape the band also made the decision to sell their album in an NFT format. Making them the first artist to make UK number 1 with the implemented technology.

2 weeks ago, the band released their most recent single, “You Make Me Feel Like It’s Halloween”, alongside the full album. Exploring their more overtly spooky tendencies, the track sees the band go full Danny Elfman for about 4 minutes. The Tom Teller-directed music video forces as many references to 80’s horror cult classics that it almost feels like a trailer to a pseudo-MCU horror movie, but with the guys from ‘Scream’ instead of Iron Man. You can check out the video below.

As mentioned before, the group announced the UK leg of the tour a few weeks back. With support from Royal Blood, the 4-night tour will see – probably – some massive-scale shows at some of the country’s biggest venues. The shows will kick off at Plymouth’s Home Park on 27^th May 2023. Tickets have already gone on sale so you can try to bag any remaining spots here. If the band’s history is anything to rely on, the shows will carry the tradition of just trying to do everything they did on the last tour… but bigger. Expect massive puppets on stage, fireworks, and maybe even some people floating over the crowd. Who’s to say.

Muse’s UK tour dates:

27/05/23 – Home Park – Plymouth
20/06 – John Smith’s Stadium – Huddersfield
23/06 – Bellahouston Park – Glasgow
25/06 – The National Bowl – Milton Keynes

The energetic, rousing tune harkens back to the attitude-smothered, politically charged music of Muse’s “Uprising” era, accompanied by a music video portraying a people’s revolt against an oppressive authoritarian regime.

Speaking on the concept of their forthcoming record, frontman Matt Bellamy said: “Will Of The People’ is [a] fictional story set in a fictional metaverse on a fictional planet ruled by a fictional authoritarian state run by a fictional algorithm manifested by a fictional data centre running a fictional bank printing a fictional currency controlling a fictional population occupying a fictional city containing a fictional apartment where a fictional man woke up one day and thought ‘fuck this’ ”.

Bellamy went on to say: “We were reaching that point where there was talk about maybe doing a greatest hits album, and we weren’t really in favour of doing that…“So it’s almost like we’ve made a record that is a greatest hits album – of new songs. That means this album might have a metal track on it – and it’s like, the best metal track we’ve ever done. Or there’s a sort of soft ballad, love song and it’s probably the best ballad love song we’ve ever done, and so on…It’s a montage of the best of Muse. It’s a new take on all of those types of genres that we’ve touched on in the past.”

You can pre-order Muse’s forthcoming ninth record Will of the People here, including physical media.

For EU and US fans, Muse have announced a short albeit intimate tour, consisting of dates in Los Angeles, Chicago, Toronto, New York City, Amsterdam, Paris and Milan. The band said in regard to this small tour: “We had such a good time at our recent charity shows at the Apollo in London last month we wanted to play some of these types of smaller theatres that we hadn’t played for a long time in the U.S and Europe before we head out on tour in 2023”.

More information regarding the forthcoming tour, including tickets, can be viewed here.

Lancaster’s work has seen him become a three-time Grammy nominee, and in addition to working with Bring Me The Horizon, he has also worked with a number of other high-profile acts including Blink-182, 5 Seconds of Summer, One OK Rock, Lower Than Atlantis, Don Broco and A Day To Remember.

Muse performed their first large-scale shows this year, playing two charity gigs at Eventim Apollo Hammersmith in London, pulling out some brand-new songs in their setlist and treating fans to some rare tunes that the band seldom performs live. During these gigs, Lancaster’s contributions to Muse’s new live setup were debuted, seeing him take up percussion, synth, keyboard and guitar duties. Lancaster is primarily a producer, and worked on the mix for the band’s recent single “Won’t Stand Down”.

Lancaster shared several stunning photos of the performances on Twitter, with the caption: “Amazing couple of nights playing with @muse thank you everyone! Looking forward to summer”.

Amazing couple of nights playing with @muse thank you everyone! Looking forward to summer pic.twitter.com/iPBvLK6UOk

— Dan Lancaster (@DanJLancaster) May 11, 2022

Lancaster’s inclusion as a touring member has marked the end of an era for previous Muse collaborator Morgan Nicholls of Senesless Things, who has been touring with Muse for a whopping sixteen years. Nicholls extended warm sentiments to Muse via Twitter regarding their new tour, saying: “Wishing MUSE and all their family, friends, crew, management and lovely fans all the very best for the ‘Will Of Th People’ album tour. Sure to be utterly brilliant as always! Going to miss you all… until next time.”

In other recent news regarding Muse, the band has now released two singles from their forthcoming album The Will of the People, which is scheduled for release on August 26^th. New music was initially teased earlier in the year when Matt Bellamy shared a clip of a new song (now known to be the lead single “Won’t Stand Down”) on a livestream hosted on Muse’s Instagram. “Won’t Stand Down” was released on the 13^th of January and saw the band exploring the heavier side of their sound.

The second single “Compliance” was released on the 17^th of March, once again following the anti-establishment themes that fans are accustomed to. In a statement regarding the song’s meaning, the group said: “Compliance is about the promise of safety and reassurance sold to us by powerful entities during times of vulnerability. Gangs, governments, demagogues, social media algorithms & religions seduce us with misleading untruths and comforting fables. They want us to join their narrow worldview in exchange for obedience and turning a blind eye to our own internal voice of reason & compassion. They just need our Compliance.”

Will of the People can be pre-ordered here.

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The Cavern Club, which plays host to a maximum of 220 attendees, was graced by Muse’s first performance since 2019, as part of Jim Beam’s “Welcome” sessions. The Welcome Sessions debuted last year as live music was ushered back into the world following the music industry’s abrupt stand still at the hands of the COVID-19 pandemic. The initial entries in the series featured intimate performances from world-renowned acts such as Dublin’s own post-punk titans Fontaines D.C, English rockers Wolf Alice, singer-songwriter Jack Garratt and Swedish singer-songwriter José González. Those who attended Muse’s cosy comeback gig had entered a ballot on Seetickets to be chosen to attend the show, and those lucky few were given information on the venue’s whereabouts.

As reported by Devon Live, the band performed a 45-minute-long set and filmed a promotional video throughout. This comes just ahead of their ninth studio album Will of the People.

According to Setlist.FM, the band commenced the electrifying evening with a performance of their newest single “Won’t Stand Down”, a heavy tune with a great deal of metal influence. Muse also performed the second single from the album “Compliance”, and of course brought out some fan favourites such as “Hysteria”, “Supermassive Black Hole”, “Plug-In Baby”,  and “Knights of Cydonia”. The video linked below is presently the only available footage of the gig.

Will of the People will be released on the 26^th of August via Warner Records and Helium-3. Never being a band to shy away from politically charged lyrical content, frontman Matt Bellamy said of the , according to NME: “‘Compliance’ is about submission to authoritarian rules and reassuring untruths to be accepted to an in-group…Gangs, governments, demagogues, social media algorithms and religions seduce us during times of vulnerability, creating arbitrary rules and distorted ideas for us to comply with. They sell us comforting myths, telling us only they can explain reality while simultaneously diminishing our freedom, autonomy and independent thought… We are not just coerced, we are herded, frightened and corralled to produce a daily ‘two minutes of hate’ against an out-group of their choosing and to turn a blind eye to our own internal voice of reason and compassion. They just need our Compliance.”

The forthcoming album can be pre-ordered here, and the track list can be viewed down below.

1). Will Of The People
2). Compliance
3). Liberation
4). Won’t Stand Down
5). Ghosts (How Can I Move On)
6). You Make Me Feel Like It’s Halloween
7). Kill Or Be Killed
8). Verona
9). Euphoria
10). We Are Fucking Fucked

We’re honoured to be able to play these shows over two nights for three outstanding organisations. They’re out there delivering vital services time after time for the most vulnerable people in society, both in the UK and abroad. Tickets on sale Wed 9am BST https://t.co/6xLVVMtql4 pic.twitter.com/zeoOhtoMF1

— muse (@muse) March 28, 2022

Another consistency for the band, at least in the last few years anyway, has been putting on these more intimate shows for charity. War Child are a charity that the band have worked with before, they even feature on War Child’s last compilation album with a weird cover The Animals’ “House Of The Rising Sun” listen below, but the first night (set to take place Monday 9^th May) will also have its proceeds split with Médecins Sans Frontières. Both charities will be using the money to assist relief efforts in Ukraine. The 2^nd night (the day after on Tuesday 10^th May) will celebrate the 30^th anniversary of British street magazine ‘The Big Issue’, the night will also feature support from Razorlight.

Fan pre-sale starts tomorrow and 9AM (Tuesday 29^th), but is only accessible with a code from the Muse mailing list. General sale will take place here, the next day again at 9AM (Wednesday 30^th). So far, we don’t know of any particular quirks to make this a once in a lifetime concert – no requests or weird sets laid in advance or anything like that – but that being said, an intimate Muse gig has been something to marvel at since the very beginning of their career. So throw in a few live debuts, and hopefully some spaceships or something as a part of the set-up, and you’ve got yourself a pretty solid concert.

See here for full details on Muse’s gigs on the festival circuit, plus any further information you might need on the Eventim Apollo gigs, see here.