If you were anything other than the most hardcore of Muse fans, it would be fair to wonder whether the Teignmouth trio’s best days are now behind them. While always a spectacular live proposition, the last decade has seen a steady stream of increasingly disappointing albums. Records like Drones and Simulation Theory saw them tiptoe ever closer to self-parody, and although 2022’s Will Of The People had its moments, it was ultimately too doomy and dystopian to return the band to their former glories (this was an album which, lest we forget, ended with a song entitled We Are Fucking Fucked).

Which is why it’s such a relief to hear The Wow! Signal. For Muse’s tenth album, Matt Bellamy, Dom Howard and Chris Wolstenholme have rolled back the years to produce what sounds very much like a vintage Muse record. Thankfully, Bellamy has shifted his gaze away from domestic political fatigue, and is looking at the cosmos once again – the album takes its name from the 1977 narrowband radio signal which suggested extra-terrestrial existence. It may be no coincidence then that this is the most satisfying Muse album since Black Holes And Revelations.

It is still, of course, wildly over the top. Opening track The Dark Forest nods towards Knights of Cydonia with its galloping rhythm, operatic choirs (singing in Latin, because of course they are) and a guitar riff that takes Heart‘s Barracuda and feeds it through a shredder. It’s the sort of song that could easily close an album, so for it to be an introductory track speaks volumes about the levels of confidence on display.

In many ways, The Wow! Factor is Muse’s heaviest record to date. Cryogen harks back to the days of Plug In Baby or Time Is Running Out – a big, adrenaline fuelled rock song that builds up to an absolutely thrilling climax. The Sickness In You, meanwhile, has an enormous, strutting energy about it – like the best moments on the album, it often threatens to become fully overblown, but just manages to put a brake on things before it all becomes a bit too much.

Yet, this isn’t merely an exercise in safely repeating past triumphs. There are more than a few surprising musical departures scattered throughout the album. Perhaps the biggest of those surprises is Hush, a duet with Ellie Goulding, which seems to owe a huge debt to Billie Eilish‘s Bad Guy. Bellamy and Goulding’s voices work surprisingly well together, and it’s the perfect distillation of Muse’s bombast and Goulding’s more sleek pop nous.

Elsewhere, Chris Wolstenholme’s bass takes centre stage on the blistering, disco-tinged Nightshift Superstar, a song that swaps the usual guitar-fuelled histrionics for sophisticated Daft Punk-esque pop-funk, while Bellamy’s recent marriage break-up provides some emotional weight behind some of the ballads on the record. Shimmering Scars, for instance, sees Bellamy howling “was I not enough, what still remains, I don’t wanna break”, while the beautiful Space Debris closes the record on a surprisingly restrained note: it’s performed almost in waltz-time, with Bellamy’s lyrics comparing the ending of his marriage to space debris that just “drifts away”. It’s their most touching ballad since Unintended.

Like every Muse album, some will find the unabashed bombast a bit too much, and Bellamy’s voice remains very much an acquired taste. However, after the disappointments of the last few years, it’s simply just a relief to hear them back to something approaching their best at long last.