Photo: Moses Namkung, wikimedia commons

We’ve always had a bit of a soft spot for Muse. The British band started out as a band that combined the rock spectacle of Queen with the songwriting chops of Radiohead before they got freaked out by people liking their song-based music. Not to mention the fact that the end of their song “Knights of Cydonia” straight up borrowed from Iron Maiden. Lately, they’ve been gotten a little more alt-rocky, and their new song, “”Thought Contagion,” even has drum machine effects in it, although it’s still guitar-based. However, singer/guitarist Matt Bellamy tells the BBC that the guitar is a lot less than what it once was, and it’s more of an accessory than a lead instrument.

“The guitar has become a textural instrument rather than a lead instrument,” he told the BBC. “And I think that’s probably a good thing. What’s exciting about this period of music is you can mix classical with hip-hop and rock in the same song. As a rock band you’re slightly one foot in the past, playing instruments like guitar, bass and drums.”

Saying that he’s always kept an eye on what’s happening in contemporary music, Bellamy adds that a mix of genres in the same song appears to be what kids these days are into:

“It’s almost like genre was an aesthetic that people attached themselves to, not just in music but also in the way they dressed and the kind of friends they hung around with,” said Bellamy. “I feel like that age has come to an end and what’s interesting about music now is not just the style-blending but the era-blending. So you’ll have an artist like Lana Del Rey doing a song that sounds and feels like it’s set in the 1950s, but she’s singing about video games. It’s an interesting time for era-blending and creating something which is timeless, and not particularly attached to any time. It becomes something ethereal and different.”

That can’t be right, can it? It’s not like Gibson is going out of business or anything? Oh wait…

Muse’s next album doesn’t have a release date yet, and “Thought Contagion” is the second song released from it.