Many of Muse’s albums, most notably Origin of Symmetry, have revolved around strange and often cryptic messages, sent by the band in a variety of ways.
While they toured the U.S. in 2005, Muse left a long-running series of cryptic titles in their setlists, as alternate names for their new songs. These cryptic names turned out to be a series of anagrams. The Internet forums flared up, full of fans trying to solve the anagrams and figure out what they pointed towards. Finally, a lucky few fans figured out what they had to do: one of the anagrams (“cold aqua tomato”) pointed to an email address (which is no longer active), while others gave details of passwords and subject headings. A mere thirteen people worked this out, and received replies from the band that pointed to a prize: a bicycle locked up in the U.S., its location and the combination to unlock it.
Muse created what seemed to be a giant treasure hunt, and in their future setlists more anagrams pointed towards more complicated methods of decryption, caesar squares and the use of an M-3 Enigma naval simulator. A second wave of fans complied to the demands of the clues, which involved writing the password on their bodies and including a picture in the email, and this time only four people were successful in getting a reply. [6]
More recently, Muse’s manager, Tom Kirk, has posted messages on behalf of the band on their forums alluding to the progress of the forthcoming album in a very indirect and cryptic way.[7] As details emerge about the record, it has only then become apparent what parts of these messages referred to.
i was just randomly listening to Muse (don’t even know which record this is) and wondered what was up with them. never really followed them whatsoever…i think i DL’d this record back in the Napster days. anyhoo, reading that bit above instantly made me a huge fan…
(turns out the record i have is Showbiz. the rest are now on my wish list.
