Whatever happened to Muse? Their new 2026 album and the Norwich concert I still talk about after all these years.
Ask any live music photographer in Norfolk which gigs stay with them, and the big nights always come up. I hold my hands up.
I am one of them, and the question I get asked most has nothing to do with cameras. It is about the bands.
The other day someone asked me whatever happened to Muse. It sent me straight back to a field in Norwich in 2015 and I Suddenly thought. I haven’t got a clue. So I did some digging.
As a professional concert photographer, I shoot so many bands and international artists, that you can’t keep a track on where or what they’re doing, but I Had to dig around google to see what Bellamy was up to in the past 11 years,.
For a band that used to be everywhere, they have gone quiet. So I went digging through the archive, because we shot Muse right here in Norwich, and those frames have been sitting on a drive ever since.
May 2015, a Big field in Norwich. Muse take to the stage for Radio 1’s Big Weekend. It was a great chance for a Live Music Photographer in Norfolk
It was Radio 1’s Big Weekend, out on Earlham Park next to the UEA. Fifty thousand people across the two days, with most of the tickets held back for people on an NR postcode, which felt about right.
For once the biggest free ticketed music event in Europe was happening on our doorstep instead of someone else’s.
Muse headlined the Saturday. It was their first time back on the Big Weekend main stage in nine years, and Matt Bellamy had been telling anyone who would listen that the last one had been a disaster he wanted to put right.
They did not do it quietly. Balloons bouncing over the crowd during Bliss, confetti for Mercy, CO2 cannons going off on Uprising and Knights of Cydonia. Three blokes from Devon, Bellamy, Dom Howard and Chris Wolstenholme, turning a Norfolk park into a stadium.
When we photographed them they were touring Drones, the record that went on to win them a Grammy for best rock album. The next day Foo Fighters and Taylor Swift took over the same stage.
Not a bad weekend for a Live Music Photographer in Norfolk working in a provincial city like Norwich.
Matt Bellamy of Muse on the main stage, Radio 1 Big Weekend Norwich 2015
What it is like to shoot a band that size
If you have never done it, here is how it goes. You get the first three songs in the pit and then you are out.
No flash. A wall of light and smoke that changes every second, and a frontman who never stands still. You learn the setlist, you watch for the big moments coming, and you keep your nerve.
Muse gives you plenty to work with. The job is staying calm enough to actually catch it while it is all going off around you.
So where did Muse actually go?
Not as far as people think. Simulation Theory turned up in 2018, all neon and synths.
Will of the People came in 2022 and handed them their seventh UK number one album on the bounce.
Then things went quiet, at least over here.
2025 arrives! Last summer they did a short run of festivals, but it was almost all mainland Europe and the Nordics, and a fair bit of it happened by accident.
They had not planned to tour in 2025 at all. They were meant to be making the new record.
Then Foo Fighters pulled out of Hellfest, Muse stepped in, and once they were up and running they bolted on a few more dates.
They also covered for Kings of Leon at a couple of festivals after Caleb Followill needed surgery.
Good of them. None of it was over here though, so for most British fans Muse had basically vanished.
Why a massive band played a tiny room
Then in April this year, with almost no warning, Muse announced a show at the O2 Academy Brixton. Around five thousand people. For a band that fills The O2 and headlines Glastonbury, that is tiny.
A few people asked me why a band that big would bother with a room that small. The answer is that the small size is the whole point.
Put an arena band in a five thousand room and it sells out in minutes, fans queue overnight for the barrier, and every music outlet writes it up for you.
You also get to break in new songs in a hot, sweaty space before you take them out to the big stages. They debuted a couple of new tracks that night and dug out some old ones.
There was a bit of history to it too. It was their first time at Brixton since 2001, just before Origin of Symmetry came out, so going back there to launch a new era made a tidy story.
They dressed the whole thing up as a live transmission, which ties into the space theme they have been running with.
The new album, The Wow! Signal
That space theme is the new record. The Wow! Signal is their tenth album, and it lands on the 26th of this month. It is a concept record about deep space, named after a real event.
Back in 1977 a radio telescope picked up a strong 72 second burst coming from the direction of Sagittarius, odd enough that some people reckoned it might be a signal from somewhere out there. Very Muse.
They announced it by firing a tablet about 33km up into the sky, because of course they did. The singles have been trickling out since,
Be With You, Cryogen, Hexagons and a few more.
After the album there is a North American tour over the summer with Bloc Party and a couple of others along for the ride. Bellamy has hinted at smaller European shows this year and a proper big tour in 2027.
There is still no real UK run on the books though, so that one Brixton night might be it for a while.
Full circle, back to the same field
Here is the part that brings it home for me. Earlham Park, the field where we photographed Muse in 2015, is the same field we will be working again this August.
Blanc Creative is the official media partner for Rock N Roll Circus 2026 when it comes to Norwich on the 20th to the 23rd, with a full crew on the ground for photo, film and drone.
Eleven years on, the kit has moved on and the team has grown, but the part that matters has not changed.
The lights drop, a few thousand people make a noise you can feel in your chest, and your job is to freeze it so it lasts longer than the ringing in your ears.
We were there for Kisstory, we were there for Let’s Rock and this year, we’re on our own familiar stomping ground again at The circus us.
That is why I keep doing this, and why I back myself as the live music photographer Norfolk crowds want behind the barrier.
Looking for a live music photographer in Norfolk that can rely on?
We are a Norfolk creative company and we do a lot more than music. Photography, video, drone work and podcasts, the lot. But live music is where plenty of this started, and it is still the bit that gets me out of bed.
If you are putting on a gig, a festival or a club night anywhere in the county and you want it shot properly, by someone who has actually stood in the pit for the bands that matter, give me a call on 07871 364041 or email: studio@blanc-creative.com
Let’s talk about your event, your concert, your festival or your bands promo images
