But nor would they nail adolescence with such panache as they do on their second LP. Origin of Symmetry romanticizes a time when pop was primal, titanic, and camp. By combining goth vulnerability with sci-fi scale and hard-rock drama, it captures a paradox of young romance: On one hand, Bellamy sounds wracked with despair, but he proclaims his heartbreak with the glee of an ecstatic preacher. Origin of Symmetry's mercurial range honors those dueling emotions: in "Space Dementia"'s barbarian opera, "Feeling Good"'s benevolent vaudeville, "Bliss"'s Nintendo-prog fantasia, "Plug in Baby"'s widdly licks. Their radio A-list forebears were the mannered realists of kitchen-sink Britpop, whose fetish for authenticity had awakened an everyman army of Coldplays and Travises. Across the pond, grunge had transformed goofball rock into lucrative torment, unloosing a glut of disaffected Nirvana clones. Muse's debut, Showbiz, tried the self-serious angst thing, too. But Bellamy, emboldened by nu-metal's reign, was nudging it into the hyperbolic. He sang with real pain—Muse are ruthlessly unironic—and channeled Berlioz and Mahler, minting a sound so ludicrously over-the-top it broke the serious/piss-take binary. Despite little retrospective attention, Showbiz had been a commercial success, outselling higher-profile late-'90s records by bands like the Offspring and Korn. From a backwater filled with "a load of old biddies" (as Wolstenholme put it), the debut had flung Muse into orbit—playing arenas with the Foos and the Chilis and prancing about at their backstage parties. As his ego played catch-up, Bellamy dubbed Showbiz "a bit faffy and bollocks." He had reacquainted himself with the mischievous Russian composer Rachmaninoff: both traditionalists in accelerating worlds, fond of naive melodies that sweep and lurch into sudden turbulence. Inspirited, Bellamy delayed the second album sessions to dispense with faff and bollocks. Finally, in a rural English studio abutting a field of magic mushrooms, Muse and Tool producer Dave Bottrill recorded "New Born," "Bliss," "Darkshines," and "Plug in Baby"—the latter while tripping. (They wound up "naked in a jacuzzi," with Bellamy "deaf in one ear from falling asleep in the sauna," he told the writer Ben Myers.) The earthy energies lingered when they reunited with Showbiz producer John Leckie, who filled their studios with percussive animal bones, llama-claw necklaces, and wind chimes for ceremonial clanging, as well as introducing the band to madcap bards Tom Waits and Captain Beefheart. By then, their songwriting had already transformed, sometimes subtly and sometimes not.