Muse have frequently been compared to Radiohead, but when it came time to work on their upcoming album 'The 2nd Law,' the band took its cues from an altogether different source: dubstep star Skrillex.

Drummer Dom Howard explained the unlikely-seeming creative turn during an interview with NME, recalling that the band attended a Skrillex show and came away impressed. "We went, 'F---, it's so heavy,' loved it," he enthused. "It was like a full metal gig, they had circles of death, people were moshing, I hadn't seen a reaction like that to electronic music before. We took inspiration and came up with 'The 2nd Law: Unsustainable.'"

Singer Matt Bellamy concurred, adding, "Some of that hard dubstep and brostep coming from America is capturing the imagination. The mosh pit has moved from guitars and gone towards the laptop, so with that song we're trying to see if we can challenge the laptop. We created something that was dubsteppy but we wanted to see if we could do it with real instruments. We wanted to ask, 'Can rock bands compete with what these guys are doing?'"

'The 2nd Law,' which contains the band's Summer Olympics theme 'Survival' as well as a dozen other songs, is due for release on Sept. 17.

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