"You were my oppressor..."
Drones is the seventh studio album by the English Alternative Rock band Muse, released on 5 June 2015.
It is a Concept Album about a soldier's indoctrination into being a "drone" and the consequences of war. It's musically more rock-oriented, with a focus on guitars, bass and drums, while retaining the arena rock elements from the band's previous albums.
Tracklist:
- "Dead Inside" (4:22)
- "[Drill Sergeant]" (0:21)
- "Psycho" (5:16)
- "Mercy" (3:51)
- "Reapers" (5:59)
- "The Handler" (4:33)
- "[JFK]" (0:54)
- "Defector" (4:33)
- "Revolt" (4:05)
- "Aftermath" (5:47)
- "The Globalist" (10:07)
- "Drones" (2:49)
HERE COME THE TROPES!
- Album Title Drop: Drones appears in the lyrics of many songs throughout the album.
- Animated Music Video: The video for "Aftermath", which was a collaboration with the Japanese director Tekken.
- Apocalypse How: The end of "Drones" is a class 2 or even a 3a. It's explicitly stated 'There's no countries left', and it is most likely only two people are left alive.
- Armies Are Evil: Their track Psycho
appears to take this stance. - Black Eyes of Evil: The woman from the music video for "Dead Inside". And at the end, the man too.
- Cluster F-Bomb: "Psycho" has the line "A fucking psycho" repeated three times in the chorus apparently by a Drill Sergeant Nasty.
- Concept Album: Drones is a concept album about a person who joins the rankings of being a "drone" within warfare and eventually defects. Beware the huge Downer Ending.
- Matt later on confirmed that the album has two stories: Songs 1-10 follow the story of "Mary", who joins the rankings of being a "drone" within the army after losing her lover. The last two tracks are about a man who follows a similar story like Mary, but it only leads to a Downer Ending.
- Darker and Edgier: The album aims for this, according to Matthew Bellamy, and as one of its storylines ends with almost all of mankind killed by nukes, it certainly shows.
- Desperately Craves Affection: The narrator of "Dead Inside" appears to be this.
- Drill Sergeant Nasty: Psycho's lyric video opens with surreal imagery and a very loud, very abusive drill sergeant hamming it up. It's also from a drill sergeant's point of view.
- Ennio Morricone Pastiche: The opening of "The Globalist".
- Epic Rocking: "The Globalist", clocking out at 10:07, being their single longest song to date.
- If you take the Title Track as a coda to "The Globalist", both songs would end up totaling 12:56 in length.
- "Everybody Dies" Ending: The entire world is nuked at the end of "The Globalist".
- Fading into the Next Song: Starting from "The Handler" until the end of the album, all tracks fade into the next song: "The Handler" into "[JFK]" into "Defector" into "Revolt" into "Aftermath" into "The Globalist" into "Drones".
- Fanservice: The lyric video for "Dead Inside."
- Iconic Outfit: Throughout the Drones tour the band would perform in all-black flight suits (sometimes with red accents), loosely inspired by the uniforms of military drone pilots.
- I'm Not Afraid of You: "The Handler" is about the protagonist breaking free from the title character's control.
- Last Note Nightmare: "Reapers" ends with an absolute shriek of "HERE COME THE DRONES!" Several times over.
- Lyrical Dissonance: "Mercy" has a similar sound to "Starlight", and it is about someone trying, and presumably failing, to escape mind control.
- Metal Scream: "Psycho":I'm gonna make you! I'm gonna break you! I'm gonna make you! A FUCKING PSYCHO!
- Miniscule Rocking: "Drill Sergeant" and "[JFK]".
- Musical Nod:
- "The Globalist" features both the Adagio in G minornote , and Variation IX ("Nimrod") from Edward Elgar's Enigma Variations.
- The title track's melody is built around Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina's Missa Papae Marcelli.
- My God, What Have I Done?? : The ending of "The Globalist."
- Non-Appearing Title: "Aftermath" and "The Globalist"
- One-Word Title: "Psycho" and "Drones".
- Out-of-Genre Experience: The title track of Drones is an a capella Gregorian chant.
- Playing with Puppets: The music video and stage visuals for "The Handler" feature faceless hands controlling marionettes.
- Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: The chorus of "Defector":
- I'M-A-DE-FEC-TOR!
- Robot Girl: The focus of the music video for "Mercy". She's also being used as a Sexbot.
- Sdrawkcab Speech: A blink-and-you'll-miss-it instance in "The Globalist", with sped-up backmasked excerpts of previous songs in the album thus far.
- Self-Backing Vocalist: Taken to its logical extreme in the title track, which features Matt as a one-man madrigal choir.
- Shout-Out: One scene in the official lyrics video for the song "Mercy" (about a person feeling disillusioned with the totalitarian system where they work) shows a few masks. One is a Guy Fawkes mask.
- Title Track
- Turned Against Their Masters: The woman in the "Mercy" music video.
- Villain Song:
- "Psycho" is sung from the perspective of a Drill Sergeant Nasty (complete with drill sergeant samples) who wants to turn to person he is talking to into a mindless soldier.
- "The Globalist" is about a man rising through the ranks of a corrupt system until he controls it, and using that control to destroy the world in a nuclear holocaust. The final verse has him finally realize what a monster he's become.
- War Is Hell: Basically premise of the album.
- There's no culture left
To love and cherish
It's gone, you know it's gone for good
A trillion memories
Lost in space and time forevermore
I just wanted
I just needed to be loved
