Guitar hero: Muse's Matt Bellamy PA

Rating: 4/5

Hurray for rock concepts: if it feels like we haven’t had more than one decent one since Led Zep and Floyd, it’s because they’ve all been done by Muse. Producing this fifth record themselves, they’ve left the “Ooh, stars are brilliant” fun of their last three albums for a classically influenced record with a concluding symphony that suggests they might have jumped out of the spaceship and floated off for good.

Singer Matt Bellamy still unleashes his falsetto yowl with all the joy of a labrador with his head out of a car window, it’s just the rocking out is balanced with a lot more rocking back and forth.

The love-it-or-hate-it United States of Eurasia, a Bohemian Rhapsody trawl through power chords and shouts of “Eura-ZHIA! Eura-ZHIA!” ends on the dreamy piano of a Chopin Nocturne while this year’s Starlight, the Cure-influenced Undisclosed Desires, is a five-minute masterpiece guaranteed to induce ­euphoric floods of tears.

But Muse always threaten to jet off into the stars, rather than up their collective arse, and when they rock out, they rock OUT.

It’s terrible to think about songs in terms of how good they’d be on Guitar Hero, but if ever a song was made for button mashing, it’s Unnatural Selection’s bass line. The Goldfrapp-ish Uprising bridges the gap between now and 2006’s Black Holes and Revelations, with rousing calls to arms on the taut Resistance and MK Ultra, while the soaring Guiding Light is a power solo upgrade of 2007 single Invincible with a killer chorus.

And the 15-minute closer? Weeell, it’s only a matter of time before someone gives Muse a video game to score. The lilting arpeggios and rousing power chords on the overture to the Exogenesis Symphony may as well come with orcs running over the hills, while Cross Pollination is torturously romantic.

Let’s hope the band float back down from their ­symphony for a sixth album: resistance is futile, but ­The ­Resistance is bloody amazing.