Muse frontman Matt Bellamy says their new album 'Drones' feels "fresh".

Muse's Matt Bellamy

Muse's Matt Bellamy

The 36-year-old singer has revealed the band - also made up of drummer Dominic Howard and bass player Chris Wolstenholme - shunned digitally altering the tracks with effects and have "gone back to where [they] started" by opting for a more natural "live" sound.

He said: "We wanted to be that straight three-piece rock band we started off as.

"Producing the last two albums, we spent most of the time in the control room, fiddling around with effects and computers.

"Now we've gone back to where we started, which sounds fresh and from a live point of view, these songs work well because it's just us three jamming them out."

The 'Feeling Good' hitmaker also opened up about working with esteemed producer Robert "Mutt" Lange and confessed the Grammy-winner pushed the band harder than ever before.

He also credits Mutt, 66, with "reinvigorating [their] playing abilities."

Matt - who worked on the album with his bandmates at Mutt's Warehouse Studios in Canada - told The Sun newspaper: "His obsession to detail is phenomenal. It's been a long time since we've worked that hard.

"In fact, I don't think we've ever worked that hard on an album in terms of just playing the songs over and over and him focusing on strange details that we would never think about.

"So many producers nowadays work with technology so that they fix things and they don't push performers that hard.

"But Mutt wanted it all to be very raw and real, so for that reason we had to do lots of takes to get it right. This album has totally reinvigorated our playing abilities."

Muse's seventh studio album 'Drones' will be released this week.