More is definitely more on Muse's latest album

In the past decade, the British band Muse has released four albums, each more grandiose and conspiracy theory-laden than the last. With its new record, “The Resistance,” the band delivers yet another over-the-top piece of work, replete with a three-part symphony and a song inspired by CIA mind-control experiments.

What’s interesting, though, is that Muse’s melodramatic style continues to resist trivialization. After all, it wouldn’t be out of the question to label the band’s sound as childish and over cooked. Lead singer Matthew Bellamy’s opinions on world politics are sometimes laughably expressed — he accuses Tony Blair of “feed[ing] a hex” to Britain in the band’s 2006 song “Take a Bow” — and the goofy intensity of songs like “Micro Cuts” (off Muse’s breakout album “Origin of Symmetry”) can sometimes tilt its music dangerously close to “guilty pleasure” territory.

And yet, that operatic flamboyance is precisely why Muse has been so successful. Bellamy’s piercing, Freddie Mercury-esque falsetto, paired with Chris Wolstenholme’s driving and catchy bass riffs, has unexpectedly pushed the group to world stardom. Revisiting the band’s 2004 album “Absolution,” it’s amazing that such a fundamentally silly group can now vie for the title of biggest band in the world, alongside other British exports like Coldplay and Radiohead. The general stance taken toward Muse seems to be that if you don’t take it too seriously, you’ll have no problem enjoying its music.

With that in mind, it’s a great thing “The Resistance” is so over-the-top. To tone down the band’s reach-for-the-sky ambition and to eschew its trademark paranoia would have been a disastrous choice. At its core, “The Resistance” is distinctly Muse and, as a result, very satisfying to listen to. And yet, Muse finds room to experiment with different musical styles. In the end, we’re left with an album that should appeal to both the die-hard Muse traditionalists and the Radiohead-obsessed audiophiles who demand a new turn every now and then.

If you are looking for quintessential Muse, there is no better place to start than “Uprising,” the album’s grinding opening track. Wolstenholme’s distorted bass dominates the song and perfectly complements Bellamy’s predictably neurotic lyrics. I’m not kidding: The very first word he sings is “paranoia.”

Those who enjoyed Bellamy’s keyboard skills on past albums — especially his unforgettable piano interlude in “Butterflies and Hurricanes” — will also be pleased to find plenty examples of it interspersed throughout this album. First single “United States of Eurasia” begins as a slow piano ballad before morphing suddenly, in an unexpected guitar transition reminiscent of Queen, into an ode to the New World Order. Remember, you don’t have to take it seriously to enjoy it.

In later tracks, the record delivers more vintage Muse. “Unnatural Selection” and “MK Ultra” blend intense instrumentation with vitriolic lyrics, unleashing a merciless assault that pounds both eardrums and world leaders. The result gives “The Resistance” a wholly satisfying core that segues perfectly into a closing, three-track symphony.

Named “Exogenesis” after the theory that life made its way to Earth after originating elsewhere, the symphony is the peak of Muse’s thematic development over the past decade. The band has spent so long decrying the state of the world that now it doesn’t even want to bother fixing its problems — and so Muse sings about sending a group of astronauts into space to start life anew on some other planet! I’ll admit, it sounds laughable, but the arrangement is simply amazing and should be permitted to speak for itself.

The classically influenced score incorporates a fusion of strings, brass and piano and is so eerily beautiful that the lyrics assume an unexpected gravity. The unrestrained and all-encompassing sound of Sigur Ros, one of the few consistently interesting bands working today, comes to mind. If such a comparison can be taken as any sort of predictor, Muse is certainly headed down the right road in the closing moments of “The Resistance.”

That being said, while “Exogenesis” marks a new period of experimentation for Muse, other attempts at expanding the band’s sound are less successful. The bass clarinet solo on “I Belong To You,” for instance, feels so forced that I actually cringed upon hearing the track for the first time. The solo, which is both thematically misplaced and technically uninteresting, adds nothing to what is otherwise one of the best songs on the album. There are also moments when Muse loses track of its own unique style and flirts with other bands’ sounds. The pizzicati on “Undisclosed Desires” conjure up unwanted parallels to Depeche Mode, and, come on, only Bono could pull off the drawn-out vocals on “Guiding Light.”

While these shortcomings do not detract much from the quality of their respective tracks, they are worrying. In attempting to push the musical boundaries it has set for itself over the past decade, Muse should not feel obligated to overhaul its trademark sound. Unfortunately, songs like “Undisclosed Desires” and “Guiding Light” threaten to do just that. What Muse should strive for instead are new ways of presenting its over-the-top sound. The first live performance of “Exogenesis” — just imagine! — will put an orchestra on stage with Muse for the first time. Fans are going to demand more, and that is all Muse needs to give them: more, more, more.