Tuesday, Mar. 15, 2005 | 08:22
MANIC STREET PREACHERS - THE HOLY BIBLE - 10TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION
the n didn't like this album. she thought it generic, nothing special. maybe this is because i started her on the manics with generation terrorists, which is indeed arena rock ripped off from gnr and lesser bands. with the holy bible, however, the music turned in on itself, and the lyrics matured to their razor-edge sharpest. you can taste the metal. you can feel the cut. and then, on the eve of their american tour, the man responsible for many of those words disappeared. just as many see 'in utero' as cobain's sonic suicide note, so is this richey james'. it's more than that, though. biting political commentary, blacker-than-black nihilism, and pretty much no hope for redemption. no one is safe from this album. nothing would be the same again.
reviews like to say two things. one is that nothing sounded like this before, and nothing has since. the other is that it's so relentlessly negative, both in words and music, that it's not a fun listen. people don't really listen to it so much as scour themselves clean with it. it's both ideal for 10th anniversary release, because of the uniqueness in time and space, and not, because it's lack of popularity. in fact, the release of this in the us finally, ten years later, makes it available to a new generation of disaffected youth. granted, it still costs as much as the import did, but this time it's two cds and a dvd.
this is the sound of the walls coming down. this is the sound of oppression crushing you. this is the sound of someone fighting the good fight against the forces of evil, and losing. this is the barbed wire twisting around your neck. this is the end of the world.
