Muse Frontman: 9/11 An Inside Job

SHOCK MUSE FROM THE US
By Billy Sloan
Glasgow Mail
Aug. 28, 2006

Click Here to View the Movie Terror StormMUSE have cracked America...despite singer Matt Bellamy's outspoken views on George Bush.

The fiery British trio have rocketed to No.9 in the US Billboard charts with their great new album, Black Holes And Revelations.

But Matt - whose passion for conspiracy theories has inspired their songs - has fired a broadside at wily old Dubya in The White House.

He said: "I'm fascinated by conspiracy theories. We're surrounded by them.

"Are we really supposed to believe that a man in a cave in Afghanistan managed to orchestrate the most unbelievable attack on the United States of all time?

"I think 9/11 was definitely an inside job done by a group of high-powered people looking for an excuse to invade the Middle East for oil and other natural resources.

"I think America needed another Pearl Harbor-type event in order to invade Iraq. It gave the US and UK governments the perfect excuse to go to war."

I caught up with the singer when Muse - Dominic Howard, Chris Wolstenholme and Matt - played a sell-out gig at Meadowbank Stadium in Edinburgh last week as part of T on the Fringe.

Now the group are coming back north of the border to play the SECC in Glasgow on November 7.

On September 4, new single Starlight is released as the follow-up to their smash hit, Super massive black hole. Muse filmed the Starlight video on a cargo ship off the coast of Los Angeles and it proved a stomachchurning experience.

Matt told me: "We wanted to create the idea of a band lost at sea because we see ourselves as being outside what's happening in the music scene.

"The first two hours on the ship were awful. We were all seasick. It would have helped if we hadn't been drinking the night before.

"But it was an epic feeling playing on a huge platform with the sea all around us."

Matt was gobsmacked when Black Holes And Revelations - the group's fourth studio album - was nominated for the Nationwide Mercury Music Prize 2006.

Muse have also received FIVE nominations in this year's Kerrang Awards - for best band, album, single, video and British band.

Matt said: "With this album we thought it was time for a change. We wanted to open some new doors.

"There was a danger we could have fallen into the trip of just going down the same musical path.

"It was a nice surprise when Black Holes went to No.1 in the UK charts. We feared the record was maybe a bit too diverse for some people.

"Releasing Super massive black hole as the first single was a deliberate shock tactic. It was the opposite of anything we'd done before. But we wanted to create a stir."