15 Greatest Hard Rock Albums You Need To Hear Before You Die
8. Black Holes And Revelations - Muse
Once the 2000s really started kicking into high gear, rock seemed to big back in full swing. While bands like Green Day and Blink-182 brought rock back into the charts, other acts like Foo Fighters and The Strokes dominated the more rootsy rock scene from clubs to stadiums. That seemed to be the little band, but a hard rock band from England then took us into the deepest depths of space.
Starting out as an alternative outfit in the vein of Radiohead, Muse quickly blossomed into one of the greatest power trios still working today. Though their conceptual side worked better on albums like Absolution and possessed more punk fury on Origin of Symmetry, Black Holes and Revelations is the moment where everything came together. Even if every track isn't what you'd expect from a hard rock act, more electronic songs like "Map of the Problematique" have a certain size to them that is impossible to ignore.
On the rock end, the band takes the best aspects of bands like Queen and Metallica and turn them into fantastic epics like the space ride on "Knights of Cydonia" or the off-kilter cannonblast of "Assassin." It may be a far cry from the classic hard rock sound, but this album was a bold new direction that outlined just where hard rock may be heading a few years down the line.