Matthew Bellamy

Prior to the release of the new album, the band resumed making live performances, which had halted while recording, making a number of promotional TV appearances starting on 13 May 2006 at BBC Radio 1's One Big Weekend. The muse brit awards pics main live tour started just before the release of their album and initially consisted mostly of festival appearances, most notably a headline slot at the Reading and Leeds Festivals in August 2006.^[25] The band's main touring itinerary started with a tour of North America from late July to early August 2006. After the last of the summer festivals, a tour of Europe began, including a large arena tour of the UK.^[26] The band spent November and much of December 2006 touring Europe with British band Noisettes as the supporting act. The tour continued in Australia, New Zealand, and Southeast Asia in early 2007 before returning to England for the summer. Possibly their biggest performances to date were two gigs at the newly rebuilt Wembley Stadium on 16 June and 17 2007. Both Wembley concerts were recorded for a DVD/CD titled HAARP, which was released on the 17 March 2008^[27] in the UK and 1 April 2008^[28] in the USA. The title refers to the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program, a scientific research program aimed at studying the properties and behaviour of the ionosphere.

September 2007's issue of Q Magazine announced Matt Bellamy as a Guitar Hero. On October 1, 2007, Matthew and Muse won 2 EMA Awards in Munich for Best Group in the UK and Ireland and their live performance.^{matthew bellamy, gaia class="reference">[11]} Also in October 2007 they came top of the MTV2 top 100 British videos, with "Plug in Baby".

Some critics commented that the band had made a complete departure from the Radiohead similarities that they had been criticised for in their earlier albums.^[21]^{Muse concert pics id="cite_ref-absolutepunk_5-6" class="reference">[6]}^[30] The Sydney Morning Herald noted it charted ahead of Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke's solo album, The Eraser, when it topped the ARIA Albums Chart in its first week.^[31] The Radiohead comparisons still persisted amongst other reviewers however, as Garrett Kamps of The Village Voice described the band's sound as being "like someone put a gun to Radiohead's, er, head and forced Thom and co. to rock—no dystopian arty shit, just rock—for 72 hours straight".^[32] Kamps was highly critical of the album, commenting that "the universe has an infinite capacity for stupid, stupid shit".^[32]