Manic Street Preachers [The Holy Bible]
What an apt title, this is the Manic Street Preachers third album, and it seems that everything they were trying to do was epitomised in this album, their Holy Bible or manifesto, it centres on themes of American consumerism / British imperialism / freedom of speech / the holocaust / self-starvation / serial killers / the death penalty / political revolution / fascism / suicide, sounds bleak as hell!, but is actually in many ways a great reality check, there's swearing on the album, but the whole thing is driven by an incredible Rock sound, deep down it's Punk, after this album they would go on next to record Everything Must Go, their most commercially successful album ever, but i refer to it as 'Everything's Gone'!, it's hard to repeat the caustic sarcasm of this phenomenal disc, one of the greatest albums ever written, plus i think of it as Richey James Edwards album, he's credited with roughly 80% of the songwriting.
The Manic Street Preachers are from Wales, formed in 1986, they're still going strong, on the front cover is a painting called 'Strategy' by Jenny Saville, showing three paintings from different angles of an obese woman, it's revolutionary to to show the track listing on the front cover, but it works greatly, a white background with black lettering, and every 'R' turned around, makes the track Revol make sense, which is of course Lover in reality, or a play on the word 'revolutionaries', which becomes 'loverutionaries'.
All of these tracks hit me, the whole album is so good, but tracks 1-2, 6-9 & 13 were especially good, and i would like to talk about the very best two here,
6 Revol - A political statement, likening love to 'revolutionaries', hence Revol, but of course these Dictators all got it backwards, the first verse lists the Russian six, with each being delivered a damning verdict on their inability to love others, the second verse targets Europe and the rest of the world, with a short introduction, the must just explodes into grunge [0:13+], crunching guitars while Bradfield sings, it really has a powerful magnetism / addiction to it, the chorus is one of those shouty anthem things, lots of German words too, i like the instrumental guitar bridge between the chorus [2:07-2:32], a great little track, best lyric 'Khrushchev - self love in his mirrors'.
13 PCP - The last track on the album, this one starts with a ferocious intro of tribal drums and guitars, but explodes into something so much more stronger and melodic [0:15+], the lyrics have a tendency to be 'preachings' by the wordsmith of the band [no doubt Richey James Edwards], and aren't easy to fit to the meter of the tune, therefore Bradfield has to crunch up syllables at times to get things to fit, plus there's no rhyming as such, in the booklet the lyrics read as a book rather than written in verses / chorus, it can all seem very storylike rather than poemlike, and yet this is the strength of the album, you really have to dig deeper to get something out of it, again the chorus is excellently very anthemic, i like Bradfield's delivery, a nice Punk voice, and just like Revol, there's a short guitar instrumental bridge [2:28-2:40], at the end there's a sort of 'epilogue / denouement' [3:19-3:42], a summation of the songs morals, it ends in Prozac being an amnesiac, and Albert Finney talking about not remembering the first line in Shakespeare's King Lear, best lyric 'Europe's gravestone carved in plastic'.
The Manic Street Preachers are from Wales, formed in 1986, they're still going strong, on the front cover is a painting called 'Strategy' by Jenny Saville, showing three paintings from different angles of an obese woman, it's revolutionary to to show the track listing on the front cover, but it works greatly, a white background with black lettering, and every 'R' turned around, makes the track Revol make sense, which is of course Lover in reality, or a play on the word 'revolutionaries', which becomes 'loverutionaries'.
All of these tracks hit me, the whole album is so good, but tracks 1-2, 6-9 & 13 were especially good, and i would like to talk about the very best two here,
6 Revol - A political statement, likening love to 'revolutionaries', hence Revol, but of course these Dictators all got it backwards, the first verse lists the Russian six, with each being delivered a damning verdict on their inability to love others, the second verse targets Europe and the rest of the world, with a short introduction, the must just explodes into grunge [0:13+], crunching guitars while Bradfield sings, it really has a powerful magnetism / addiction to it, the chorus is one of those shouty anthem things, lots of German words too, i like the instrumental guitar bridge between the chorus [2:07-2:32], a great little track, best lyric 'Khrushchev - self love in his mirrors'.
13 PCP - The last track on the album, this one starts with a ferocious intro of tribal drums and guitars, but explodes into something so much more stronger and melodic [0:15+], the lyrics have a tendency to be 'preachings' by the wordsmith of the band [no doubt Richey James Edwards], and aren't easy to fit to the meter of the tune, therefore Bradfield has to crunch up syllables at times to get things to fit, plus there's no rhyming as such, in the booklet the lyrics read as a book rather than written in verses / chorus, it can all seem very storylike rather than poemlike, and yet this is the strength of the album, you really have to dig deeper to get something out of it, again the chorus is excellently very anthemic, i like Bradfield's delivery, a nice Punk voice, and just like Revol, there's a short guitar instrumental bridge [2:28-2:40], at the end there's a sort of 'epilogue / denouement' [3:19-3:42], a summation of the songs morals, it ends in Prozac being an amnesiac, and Albert Finney talking about not remembering the first line in Shakespeare's King Lear, best lyric 'Europe's gravestone carved in plastic'.
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