As Muse preps their upcoming seventh studio album Drones, they've announced that its fourth single, a piano ballad titled "Mercy," will premiere Monday, May 18, on Annie Mac's BBC Radio 1 show. The new single, which debuted live last week in New York, follows the previously released "Psycho," "Reapers," and "Dead Inside," NME reports.
Frontman Matt Bellamy said about the album in a statement.
"To me, drones are metaphorical psychopaths which enable psychopathic behavior with no recourse," Bellamy said. "The world is run by drones utilizing drones to turn us all into drones. Drones explores the journey of a human, from their abandonment and loss of hope, to their indoctrination by the system to be a human drone, to their eventual defection from their oppressors."
He also spoke to Rolling Stone last month about the band's decision to strip down their sound and write politically charged songs.
"Our intention was to go back to how we made music in the early stages of our career, when we were more like a standard three-piece rock band with guitar, bass and drums," he told them. "We probably spent more time in the control room, fiddling with knobs and synths and computers and drum machines than actually playing together as a band. As I look back at the last three albums, each one had progressively less and less songs that we could play live."
Bellamy told him the album title was inspired by the book Predators: The CIA's Drone War on al Qaeda by Dartmouth professor Brian Glyn Williams. The album also features a speech from John F. Kennedy and makes mention of robots taking over and oppressive government systems.
Drones, which Bellamy called Muse's best album yet, is due out June 8.
Drones Tracklist
01. Dead Inside
02. [Drill Sergeant]
03. Psycho
04. Mercy
05. Reapers
06. The Handler
07. [JFK]
08. Defector
09. Revolt
10. Aftermath
11. The Globalist
12. Drones
