Muse have specialized in drama-rock gigantism for more than a decade – long enough to get really good at it. The trio's sixth LP is their most expansive and varied yet, filling out a go-to mix of Queen boom and Radiohead gloom with disco Bowie, Eighties U2, metal, dubstep and enough strings to support a suspension bridge – then wrapping this distinctly English prog-rock crazy quilt around a distinctly English prog-rock theme (something about thermodynamics and economic collapse). When a song that was entrance music at the Olympics ("Survival") barely gets the bronze for Most Epic Thing on Your Record, that's a triumph that would make Freddie Mercury's mustache tingle.

"Wake to see your true emancipation is a fantasy," Matthew Bellamy moans on "Supremacy," a jeremiad against the hubris of modern man that turns Led Zeppelin's "Kashmir" into a black-booted march. It's not all collapse and misery: "Madness" blows up the dub-soul minimalism of the xx into a slinky, slow-burn love song complete with Brian May guitar pyro. But the album-ending mini-opera – "The 2nd Law: Unsustainable" and "The 2nd Law: Isolated System" – makes it clear Muse's rehearsal space is fully stocked with bottled water and canned goods. Against orchestral swirls, bass drops and lush Radiohead pantomime, a British scientist direly informs us that "an economy based on endless growth is unsustainable." It's bad news that makes for some fine spectacle.

Listen to The Second Law:

“I Can See for Miles”

A foreboding accusation of lies and deception, "I Can See for Miles" was given a psychedelic hard-rock veneer by Pete Townshend's whiplash guitar riffs and Keith Moon's thundering drums. The song helped break the Who as stars in the United States, giving them a Top Ten hit in late 1967. "I swoon when I hear the sound," boasted Townshend in Rolling Stone. "The words, which aging senators have called 'drug oriented,' are about a jealous man with exceptionally good eyesight. Honest."