Muse's headline set at the Isle of Wight festival on Sunday (June 19) was sprawling – a 21-track blast filled not only with a host of classics from their monstrous back catalogue, but a few unexpected audio tidbits, too.
They included a snippet of AC/DC's Back in Black tagged onto the end of Absolution cut Hysteria, the intro and iconic breakdown from Slipknot's Duality capping off Won't Stand Down, and Jimi Hendrix's Foxy Lady and Guns N' Roses' Sweet Child O' Mine rounding off Supermassive Black Hole and Plug In Baby, respectively.
But a notable highlight came when frontman Matt Bellamy set down his electric guitar after wrapping up Plug In Baby, subsequently putting on a robotic musical glove to play his 2020 solo single, Behold, the Glove.
In new footage posted on YouTube, Bellamy can be seen venturing out to the stage's ego ramp walkway wearing the glove like a musically-inclined Thanos, before using it to play a selection of calming synth lines. The audio-visual treat only lasted two-or-so minutes, though, before the band launched into The Resistance opener Uprising. Watch the performance at the top of the page.
Muse are currently gearing up to release their ninth studio album, Will of the People. In addition to Won't Stand Down, the band have dropped two other singles from the record, Compliance and its ultra-groovy title track. All three were played during Muse's Isle of Wight set, which also included yet-unreleased single Kill or Be Killed during the encore.
The band played a similar set at Tempelhof Sounds 2022, in Berlin. Where pro-shot footage emerged the following day, giving fans a taster of the pitch-shifting Kill or Be Killed, and perhaps of a new Manson Oryx series model. Bellamy performed the new track on a white Oryx-style double-cut with an intriguing multi-scale six-string design.
Will of the People is described by the band as an exploration of the “increasing uncertainty and instability in the world”, charting Bellamy's personal navigation through the volatile events of the past few years.
“A pandemic, new wars in Europe, massive protests and riots, an attempted insurrection, Western democracy wavering, rising authoritarianism, wildfires and natural disasters and the destabilization of the global order all informed Will of the People,” Bellamy explains.
“It has been a worrying and scary time for all of us as the Western empire and the natural world, which have cradled us for so long, are genuinely threatened,” he added. “This album is a personal navigation through those fears and preparation for what comes next.”
Will of the People is set to arrive on Warner Bros on August 26 and is available to pre-order.
