Muse top UK album chart with Drones to score fifth number one

Muse have topped the UK official albums chart for a fifth time with their latest record Drones.

The album has received mixed reviews but sold almost 73,000 copies this week to over take Florence + The Machine’s latest release How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful.

The cover art for Drones was initially dismissed by fans as “a concept dreamed up by a fedora-wearing conspiracy theorist” but appears to have won over sceptics.

The Independent gave the album a four star review, calling it “unrepentantly ambitious and laced with emotional intrigue”.

“The concept-album plot doesn’t help…but Muse maintain control of their excesses…The narrative takes precedence on some mid-album clunkers, but the climax is full-bore grand,” critic Kevin Harley wrote.

Muse have previously topped the UK album chart with Absolution (2003), Black Holes & Revelations (2006), The Resistance (2009) and The 2nd Law (2012).

Elsewhere in the charts, Collabro’s Act Two is in third place, Ed Sheeran’s x climbs six places to re-enter the top five at number four, followed by Sam Smith’s In The Lonely Hour in fifth position.