Muse. Photo by Marissa Altazan.

Photos: Muse brings the hits and more to New Orleans

Seven years after their headlining set at the Voodoo Music Experience, Muse came back to perform in New Orleans. At the moment, the group is working on an eighth album that will come out next year. In the meantime, they released a new song called “Dig Down” last month.

The British trio is currently touring around North America, and on Thursday they arrived at Champions Square in New Orleans.  The first part of the show featured PVRIS and 30 Seconds to Mars, who  managed to get the crowd in the mood before the main act. 30 Seconds to Mars lead singer, Academy Award-winning actor Jared Leto, also announced that the band was working on a new album that should be released this year.

Muse opened the show with “Dig Down” before offering a mix of the most recognizable songs in their catalog. Some tunes—such as “Hysteria” or “Time is Running Out”–came from older albums like Absolution (2004), while others—for example, “Madness” and “Psycho”—came from more recent records like The Second Law (2012) and Drones (2015). That goes without mentioning other famous songs from the band such as “Uprising,” “Supermassive Black Hole,” “Undisclosed Desires” and many more.

In terms of the vibe, Thursday’s crowd took a bit of time getting in the mood, especially in the back. But when the most popular and upbeat songs came,  the crowd seemed to have plenty of fun. The light display was great, and the live versions of their songs often sounded even better than the studio versions, though sometimes it sounded like the instruments were overpowering the vocals in the mix. Nevertheless, the performance was pretty good in general and I’d recommend them to anyone who enjoys alternative rock.

All photos by Marissa Altazan.