Epic/Sony Records (1994)
"Mussolini hangs from a butcher's hook
Hitler reprised in the worm of your soul
Horthy's corpse screened to a million
Tisu revived, the horror of a bullfight"
Manic Street Preachers were always, always different from their peers. From the offset, for a start, they were destined to failure. They appeared to the world with their 1992 Sony Records debut "Generation Terrorists" proclaiming it would outsell "Appetite For Destruction" - rather it was their mouthpiece Nicky Wire who said it - as it turns out the album reported sales of around 200,000. So... Wire covered his tracks well by wishing Michael Stipe of R.E.M. "goes the same way as Freddy Mercury" from onstage at the Kilburn National in December of '92. Suddenly their unrealised predictions of world take over were forgotten.
When 1994 came about and "The Holy Bible" saw the dark of night The Manics had morphed into one dark puppy. 1993's gloss and sheen in the form of "Gold Against The Soul" had outwardly sickened the band, supports with Bon Jovi and the like meant that come album number three all propaganda and imagery was left to Richey James Edwards more or less.
His battles with depression and anorexia led him to play lead in putting together an album that was quite disturbing but absolutely moving. Wire played his part certainly but "The Holy Bible" is looked on as Edwards' realisation of his dark genius. Whilst they were, at the core, a Rock band with Pop overtones there was a very sinister bite to tracks like "Of Walking Abortion" and the American/Conservative baiting "IfwhiteAmericatoldthetruthforonedayitsworldwouldfallapart" lyrically plus a track like "The Intense Humming Of Evil" was just upsetting musically.
Upon its release the album was met with much praise but relatively poor sales. They had entered the realm of the cult band fully. Rather than flirt with lipstick and provocation, whether it be through Communist imagery or labelling Rock and Roll as homosexual, The Manics went for the jugular. An album that was marketed as a Pop release to a primarily Pop audience (as you could argue the NME/Melody Maker crowd of the UK was) that held little in common with the genre. There were singles of course but even these held a sly nudge of that something sinister.
"I am an architect, they call me a butcher
I am a pioneer, they call me primitive
I am purity, they call me perverted
Holding you but I only miss these things when they leave"
Musically, it is, by my estimation, the band's finest moment - all analysis aside, songs like "Faster", "PCP", "Yes" are prime examples of how accessible Rock/Pop should be written. Somehow the band managed to take the infection that pollutes the lyrics and make it, for the listener, infectious and dangerously catchy. Opener "Yes" has a pre-chorus that shames most chart ripping choruses we have seen in the fluent world of the hit single. Yet, for the kid who went out weekly to buy a single or an album I imagine there was something that dampened the feel good factor Sony would have hoped would shield the barbarism of the aesthetic.
"Self-worth scatters, self-esteem's a bore
I long since moved to a higher plateau
This discipline's so rare so please applaud
Just look at the fat scum who pamper me so"
And nowhere else was all of this more prevalent than on, I would say, the album's moment of crowning. “4st 7lb” (that's about 28.5kg's for the metric kids out there). A song of intense beauty and loss that seemed to perfectly sum up Richey James Edwards and his mind.
Almost a love song written from the point of view of a girl who takes joy in the slow decay of her body through anorexia. That the words are despair itself but presented and fashioned into something that resembles loving is an achievement probably not bettered in this field.
Edwards disappeared without trace several months later in what is, in hindsight, probably more fitting than anyone realised then.
www.manicstreetpreachers.com
www.epicrecords.com
Composed by Paul Kearns