Muse live at Mad Cool 2025: an era-spanning, revolutionary space-tacular

If you’re gonna parachute in a headliner to keep the Mad Cool faithful happy, they’d better know how to rock. After injury forced Kings Of Leon to sit this year’s edition of the Madrid music festival out, Matt Bellamy and co return tonight (July 10) just a few short years after their last visit. And judging by the number of Muse t-shirts peppered throughout the crowd in this scorched outer corner of the Spanish capital, no one’s too upset about the last-minute swap.

“Un-un-unravelling,” begins Bellamy on the opener and first taster of their yet-to-be-announced 10th album. Produced by Dan Lancaster – the band’s auxiliary live member for a few years and the man who co-helmed Bring Me The Horizon’s ‘Post Human: Nex Gen’ after the exit of Jordan Fish – the song comes bolstered by a little of that BMTH metalcore-pop finesse amid Muse’s usual space-rock melodrama. It goes off live – a promising taste of the future in a set that zips through every era of the band.

The pummelling bass guitar anthem ‘Hysteria’ into the Depeche Mode grace of ‘Map Of The Problematique’ see us off to a bombastic start before Muse turn their attention to shadowy forces at work with a JFK speech lifted from ‘Drones’ that warns of “a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence” before ‘Won’t Stand Down’ kicks back against said pricks. Mr Bellamy ain’t one for speeches or soapboxing, he lets the music do the talking via the defiant ‘Kill Or Be Killed’ and Queen-esque lament “wars that can’t be won” on ‘United States Of Eurasia’. The world may be on fire, but at least we can rock.

Tonight’s set would benefit from a couple of ‘Origin Of Symmetry’s proggy epics over the arena cheese of ‘Compliance’ or the Halloween-y ‘Thought Contagion’, but the more OTT the better for the Spanish Musers in the audience tonight. What’s this, though? “Here’s a song from our first album,” offers Bellamy. “I think I wrote this when I was 18 or 19, or something like that,” he goes on, before the seldom–played heart-wrencher ‘Unintended’ from 1999 debut ‘Showbiz’ is played as a more stripped-back affair with a little more ambience. Who ever said that Muse don’t do subtlety? Pop gem ‘Madness’ deals in that too, yet Bellamy’s tush-shaking and Freddie Mercury-style crowd singalong to ‘Plug In Baby’ lay waste to any notion of discretion.

It’s all bangers at the back end. The Morricone meets George Lucas spaghetti outer space Western of ‘Knights Of Cydonia’ usually makes for a grand finale, but tonight we’re given a more pop-tastic encore of ‘Undisclosed Desires’ alongside the ABBA pomp of ‘Starlight’ – a fist-pumping finish assisted by fireworks which complete a rare Muse set that covers each album. Here’s to the new era.

Muse’s Mad Cool setlist was:

‘Unravelling’
‘Interlude’
‘Hysteria’
‘Map of the Problematique’
‘Simulation Theory Theme’ / ‘[JFK]’
‘Won’t Stand Down’
‘Thought Contagion’
‘[Drill Sergeant]’
‘Psycho’
‘Kill or Be Killed’
‘Compliance’
‘Madness’
‘Plug In Baby’
‘Unintended’
‘United States Of Eurasia’
‘Hanging In Victory Square’
‘Time Is Running Out’
‘Supermassive Black Hole’
‘Uprising’
‘Knights of Cydonia’
Encore:
‘The 2nd Law: Isolated System’
‘Undisclosed Desires’
‘Prelude’
‘Starlight’

NME is the official media partner of Mad Cool

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