Three skyscraper-shaped pillars loomed over Silversun Pickups during the L.A. quartet’s opening set Friday night at KeyArena. And shortly after recalling the time his band kicked it at the Fremont Troll and an early gig at Fremont Oktoberfest, singer-guitarist Brian Aubert delivered a warning about those foreboding props and tour mates, Muse.

“Your brains are gonna melt a little bit. If you care about your brain, you should leave.”

Joke or no joke, I wasn’t about to take off. Strangely, last night was my first time seeing the heavily hyped Muse live show. From traffic jams to conflicting assignments, something has always gotten in the way. But now I know to take the Pickups‘ P.S.A. more seriously. I think I did feel my grey matter liquefying – just a little – during an epic two-hour set that left me breathless many times.

I know, I know. “Epic” gets tossed into rock reviews so often that it loses meaning (guilty.) But it bears repeating. Muse’s performance was truly epic, one of the most memorable rock spectacles I’ve witnessed on this beat. So let’s start with those eye-popping visuals.

Muse – singer, guitarist and keyboard player Matthew Bellamy, bassist Chris Wolstenholme and drummer Dominic Howard – kicked the show off with “Uprising,” the rousing synth-rock anthem that leads off last year’s “The Resistance” album. The trio was first unveiled standing in gaps in each the columns, each musician standing on a platform about 15 feet high. The platforms rose and fell allowing Bellamy and Wolstenholme to roam and reconfigure throughout the set. Howard stayed put, of course, but he spun around on one of those rotisserie drum stands all the big bands have.

I won’t say the light show was the most original technical marvel I’ve seen in concert. That honor goes to Nine Inch Nails’ tour stop at the Key in ’08. But it was quite a spectacle to behold.

The pillars doubled as three-dimensional video screens, cover with splashy L.E.D. imagery – lyrics, kaleidoscopic colors, window lights, close-ups of elated fans. And the laser light was over the top as expected, a maelstrom of shifting, green beams that should have come with a seizure warning. (Then again, I guess we kind of got that from Silversun Pickups.)

But the special effects were just window dressing for some of the most galvanizing, operatic rock on the charts. An early set highlight was “United States of Eurasia,” another standout from the new album. It’s a blatant homage to Queen, from the three-part vocal harmonies to a soaring guitar riff that’s plucked straight from Brian May’s playbook.

A little derivative, sure, but Queen is a good influence to have if you can pull it off. Muse clearly can. And Bellamy was convincing as a latter day Freddie Mercury, cooing existential malaise at his grand piano – “you and me we are the same, we don’t know or care whose to blame” – before the song exploded into a huge, cathartic crescendo.

Fans pumped their fists triumphantly as they howled the lyrics back, a frequent sight Friday night. It’s a song that had sounded better each time I played it leading up to the show, but it may never sound or feel as good as it did last night.

The immaculate, poignant “Ruled by Secrecy” was similarly moving. But all that rock opera melodrama was nicely counter-balanced by tight pop anthems and a few hard rocking moments that bordered on metallic.

Glowing, green shapes swirled around the band as they delivered the light but seductive electro-pop of “Undisclosed Desires.” It was during this song I paid the most attention to Howard as he stomped on a funky, electronic kick drum. I still can’t figure out how much of Muse’s live sound involves triggered loops, if any of it. But those boys make a lot of noise for such a small band, even if they do have an extra keyboard player in tow on this tour to help fill out the sound.

On the soaring “Starlight,” Muse may have out-Radioheaded Radiohead (think a happier “Lucky.” And I know. Blasphemy! I’ll leave an offering at the little Thom Yorke shrine I keep at my apartment later.) And before the encore, giant, confetti-filled eyeballs rained down on the crowd during a rockin’ rendition of “Plug In Baby.”

The icing on the cake for me was a brief but really cool nod to Nirvana towards the end, the best I’ve seen a touring band give since most pander to locals by covering “Smells Like Teen Spirit” (yaaaaawn.) But my ears perked up when I recognized the crunchy riff Bellamy had slipped in. Was that was that “School” from Nirvana’s genre-defining “Bleach” album? Yes it was, followed by a brief, noisy freak-out that sounded like “Endless, Nameless.” Then Bellamy tossed his axe and stormed off, a brief but satisfying moment. And who knew Muse could get so grungy?

Muse set list
KeyArena, Seattle, April 2, 2010

We Are the Universe (Intro)
Uprising
Resistance
New Born
Supermassive Black Hole
Interlude + Hysteria
Guiding Light
Nishe
United States of Eurasia
Ruled by Secrecy
Feeling Good
Helsinki Jam
Undisclosed Desires
Starlight
Unnatural Selection
Time Is Running Out
Plug in Baby

Encore:
Exogenesis: Symphony Part I (Overture)
Stockholm Syndrome
Man with a Harmonica + Knights of Cydonia