Professional ratings
Aggregate scores
Source	Rating
Metacritic	75/100
Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic
Blender
Entertainment Weekly	B+
The Guardian
Los Angeles Times
NME	9/10
Pitchfork Media	4.2/10
Q
Rolling Stone
Spin

Black Holes and Revelations is the fourth studio album by English rock band Muse, released on 3 July 2006 in the United Kingdom. It gets its title from a line in the song "Starlight", which is the second track on the album. Recording was split between New York and France, and it was the first time Muse had taken a more active role in the album's production. The album was a change in style from Muse's previous albums, and the band cited influences that included Depeche Mode, Millionaire, Lightning Bolt, Sly and the Family Stone, and music from southern Italy.

Black Holes and Revelations was placed at number 34 in a public vote conducted by Q for "The Best British Albums of all time" in February 2008. The album also spawned Supermassive Black Hole, Muse's most successful single in the UK to date hitting no.4 on the charts.

Like their two previous albums, Black Holes and Revelations has political and science-fiction undertones, with the lyrics covering topics as varied as political corruption, alien invasion, revolution and New World Order conspiracies as well as more conventional love songs.

Muse's previous album, Absolution, was released in 2003 to critical acclaim. Absolution had brought the band mainstream exposure in the United States for the first time.

The band retired to an old château in France to write for a new album. Lead singer Matthew Bellamy said that this was because the band wanted to be free from distractions so that they could "concentrate, spend time and be surrounded by different musical influences". The album was partially recorded in the same studio in France as Pink Floyd's album The Wall, of which fact bassist Chris Wolstenholme said it was a "great feeling to know that something big had been done [there]". However, the band found recording there very slow and had difficulties deciding which songs to include on the album. They travelled to New York to finish the recording.

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Wikipedia