The old tricks were there: the giant exploding balloons bouncing around the crowd during Bliss, the space-age livery which in this case looked like three men in go-kart outfits and the Rage Against The Machine meets Led Zeppelin end-of-song jams, which gave head bangers an extra opportunity to get stuck in.

Matt Bellamy's taste for pomposity remained undiminished too.

The handful of new songs unleashed on a Brighton crowd lucky enough to get tickets for this show as part of a short "intimate" tour to promote seventh album, Drones, had more in common with 1980s hair metal and Motley Crue than much of what Muse have done before.

The tracks sounded stadium ready, as did the band's impossibly precise delivery, which at times meant it was almost too slick, with Matt Bellamy's layers of vocal backing tracks occasionally whirling round the room one too many times.

The singer revealed the band recorded Absolution in Winston Churchill's old house Brighton over a two-month period in 2002, and called the city a cooler version of Teignmouth before racing into Time Is Running Out, which, in truth, sounded of its time and a little dated.

But there is a reason Muse are among the biggest British bands of the last 20 years.

A handful of new songs were sprinkled into a set filled with bangers from right across the back catalogue, including an angry, snarling Uno and the brilliant Hysteria, with its drill-like bass line driving the band's anxious world view home.