In just twelve months between 1993 and 1994, three of the darkest albums of all time were released: Nirvana's "In Utero", The God Machine's "One Last Laugh In A Place Of Dying" and Manic Street Preacher's "The Holy Bible". They are all a stark reminder of what a bleak time the early nineties were, a time when UK youth culture had woken from its ecstasy honeymoon into a paranoid comedown, while the spurt of optimism which saw the cold war end seemed to have left the world much the same: same politicians, same policies.
But while the first two parts of this toxic trilogy were introverted, self-obsessed records, "The Holy Bible" had the courage to look outwards, to look an ugly world right in its eyes. Hence this is an album of judgement which finds much that needs judging: racism, misogyny, intellectual fraud, corruption and most of all a society which had failed to learn the lessons of the second world war, a western world which didn't blink at the newer holocausts of Aids and crushing global poverty.
If this sounds extreme, you should hear the album. Following-up the bombastic flop "Gold Against The Soul", "The Holy Bible" sounded at the time like a band setting fire to their own career in sheer disgust. The stadium-sized choruses were dumped for clipped, choked, wordy rants, while Bradfield´s AOR rockisms were swamped under brutal rhythms and near-industrial sonic nastiness.
But if it's not exactly a knees-up record, it is exhilarating, from the self-mythologising, pulverising peaks of "Yes" and "Faster", to the prescient, gleaming intelligence of "PCP" and "ifwhiteamericatoldthetruth...". Most of all "The Holy Bible" is a record which saw Bradfield, challenged by the dense, wordy sloganeering of Richey Edwards, raised his game and produced music dynamic enough to match. This anniversary edition features demos and remixes that show how hard the band struggled to realise their vision, and
remind us why it was worth it.
A tragic postscript. Within months of the above three albums being released, each of the bands lost pivotal members in ugly, tragic circumstances. The Manics were the only ones to go on, but they were never to hit these incendiary depths again.
by Jaime Gill