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

The record sold 73,000 copies in its first week of release

The cover art for Muse's new album Drones (Muse/Twitter)

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.