Muse’s power comes through, loud and clear

THESE days the Forum in Inglewood is mainly the home of Sunday services for Bishop Kenneth C. Ulmer’s Faithful Central Bible Church, but on Tuesday the English drama rock trio Muse tried to conjure some devotion of its own from a sell-out crowd. Frontman Matt Bellamy was on his knees during both of the first songs of his band’s nearly 100-minute set.

Muse is one of the few modern bands that has seen its success grow with each album. Its fourth and latest, “Black Holes and Revelations,” has brought the group closest to the star status its members enjoy in their home country. Still, this second of two headlining shows the band played in the States before heading out as the opener for My Chemical Romance was far from the Wembley Stadium gigs it will be playing in June.

What Muse understands is that to be big you have to play big, and Tuesday night the group drew from the huge sounds of prog, metal, electronica and several decades of anthemic British bands.

As Jed the Fish of KROQ (the FM station that has been one their biggest domestic supporters) said in his introduction, it is a band with “outstanding power.”

Beginning with the propulsive gallop of “Knights of Cydonia,” Bellamy rallied the crowd with the call, “You and I must fight to survive,” setting the themes of kinetics, unity and struggle for the evening.

Bellamy has a talent for summing up complicated emotions through simple lyrical statements, but, perhaps afraid that the space would swallow them up, the band members too often turned to pummeling sonics in the form of bassist Chris Wolstenholme and drummer Dom Howard’s deep thud, or Bellamy’s guitar shredding antics.

Muse was at its best when its ideas came through loud and clear, as on the triumphant call to greatness “Invincible” -- a song desperately in search of a youth movement, or at least a championship team’s victory montage.

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