Muse frontman Matt Bellamy has spoken to NME about plans for the band to celebrate their huge fourth album ‘Black Holes & Revelations‘ – which was released 20 years ago today (Friday July 3).
The Devonshire space rock trio’s 2006 album was their second to reach Number One in the UK and their first and only to receive a Mercury Music Prize nomination. It contained the huge singles ‘Supermassive Black Hole’, ‘Starlight’ and ‘Knights Of Cydonia’, found the band established fame in the US, saw them top the bill at Reading & Leeds for the first time and become the first British band to headline the rebuilt Wembley Stadium where they played two nights in 2007 to later be immortalised on the ‘HAARP’ live album and DVD. ‘BlacK Holes & Revalations’ has sold more than 5million copies worldwide to date.
In a 9/10 review of the album, NME concluded: “Muse have made a ridiculous, overblown, ambitious and utterly brilliant album, with more thrills than their previous three put together, which, in an alternative universe, would leave them at the end of an epic lineage connecting the greatest bands of all time: Queen, Roxy Music, Ziggy (not his mere human form of Bowie), ABC, Frankie Goes To Hollywood, Adam And The Ants and Queens Of The Stone Age. In this universe of Dadrock authenticity, they’ve made a record with enough power and ambition that it might just rewrite that particular rulebook. Whichever way, ‘Black Holes & Revelations’ will slay you.”
Speaking to NME as part of a recent honest and all-encompassing interview about their acclaimed new Number One album ‘The Wow! Signal’, Bellamy shared that talks were underway to celebrate the album with a re-release and perhaps something special live.
“I think we’re going to bring ‘Take A Bow’ into the set,” he told NME, ahead of their 2026 tour kicking off last night where the album opener was played as the encore. “I think we’re supposed to do some kind of anniversary package, and I’ve got loads of missed emails from management saying we need this, this and this. We’ll probably try to put together some kind of anniversary package.”
Bellamy added: “Whether we play the whole album at some point, that could be an option.”
In 2019, the band celebrated their earliest years by reissuing their first two albums ‘Showbiz’ and ‘Origin Of Symmetry‘ along with demos, B-sides and unheard material for the huge ‘Origin Of Muse’ box set. Then in 2021 they marked 20 years of the seminal ‘Origin Of Symmetry’ by remixing it and a deluxe 20th anniversary vinyl reissue of third album ‘Absolution’ followed in 2023.
NME gave new album ‘The Wow! Signal’ four stars, noting: “In rekindling their own purpose, the Teignmouth trio have delivered undoubtedly their most consistent and satisfying album since ‘Black Holes & Revelations’ – doubling up as either a knowing gift to the fans or at least a response to any concerns that Muse had long disappeared too far up their own supermassive blackholes. Look up to the sky with a sigh of relief or a simple ‘wow’.”
Bellamy also recently told NME that the album found him leaning into “the unknown” after a difficult personal period and split from his wife, saying: “I can’t live without music – that feeling came back to me on this album.”
The interview also saw Bellamy look back on the ’00s guitar rock scene and share plans for “building a spaceship” for their upcoming UK and European arena tour.
Muse will then bring ‘The Wow! Signal’ to the UK and Europe this autumn, including two nights at Manchester’s Co-op Live on November 12 and 13, and two London shows at The O2 on November 15 and 16. Find tickets for those shows here.