If you live in America, Manic Street Preachers are one of the better rock bands you’ve probably never heard of.

I started writing this awhile ago, right around their September 2013 release, Rewind the Film. The bands 11th studio album. For a host of reasons, but mainly laziness, I stopped writing it. Late last week, while listening to Send Away The Tigers and thinking about the giant sink hole that is today’s rock landscape, Imade a mental note to track down Rewind the Film and revisit this post.

Neither of which proved easy considering my inherent procrastinitive nature and the fact that the band apparently doesn’t have a distribution deal here in the states.

In the early 90's, while most of America was in the flannel grasp of grunge, the UK was in the throes of its own ecstasy riddled revolution with the “Madchester” scene that begat Oasis and The Stone Roses and the Brit Pop sound of Blur and Suede. However, it would be four friends from Wales, James Dean Bradfield, Nicky Wire, Sean Moore and Richey Edwards, aka Manic Street Preachers, who would show the others up. At the time, they seemed to be armed with more hubris than talent. Almost 25 years on, they’ve proven over and over to have the talent to match that initial hubris.

The Manic’s are the only band still together releasing new work and exploring their own creativity, as a band. However, even more than talent and longevity, they’ve offered up proof they have an almost unparalleled work ethic; excluding solo albums or singles, Manic Street Preachers have released, on average, an album every other year.

Way back when, Manic Street Preachers were just a bunch of Welsh punks who released a couple singles. They captured a little core audience with their brazen (and early 90's) punk attitude, stylish look and guitar riffs. With “Motown Junk” they also garnered a fair amount of press which invariably led to major label’s taking note. Eventually signing to Columbia Records, they proclaimed that their debut album would be “the greatest rock album ever”.

That debut, Generation Terrorists, was not “the greatest rock album ever”. While it garnered mostly favorable reviews, it spawned a few singles, most notably “Motorcycle Emptiness” and “You Love Us”. Maybe it didn’t quite live up to their promise of selling 16 million copies, it did sell well in the UK (eventually receiving a Classic Album Q Award in 2012).

Where Generation Terrorists was lyrically politically punk centric, their second album, Gold Against The Soul, saw principle lyricists Nicky Wire and Richey Edwards begin to move towards slightly more introspective lyrics.

In the process, they shed some of their fan base.

Nonetheless, they soldiered on and after the promotional duties to support Gold Against the Soul had finished, the band reconvened to record what would become their third album, The Holy Bible. Given the lackluster sales of Gold Against the Soul, the pressure from the label to produce a hit album was intense.

Equally as intense was guitarist Richey Edwards increasingly shaky psychological state.

The band realized this third album was a make or break record for them. All of them.

Like Nirvana’s Nevermind, Guns n’ Roses Appetite For Destruction and Pearl Jam’s Ten before it, MSP’s The Holy Bible is one of the most fully realized visions of rock music of my generation. Musically and lyrically, The Holy Bible marks a clear demarcation point for the band. The sound is more focused, urgent and consistent than the previous two albums. It’s also a nonstop assault on your senses.

Unfortunately, it’s also the sound of a man slipping into madness. The album was recorded after Edwards had spent some time in the hospital to treat his anorexia (and the band toured as a three-piece to pay for it). What becomes clearer after each listen is that it’s a great album…and it’s also the sound of a man slipping into his own personal hell. By all accounts, including the bands, most of the lyrics were Richey Edwards.

What makes the album so complete is threading the needle from song to song are audio samples from various sources. Including an interview with author Hubert Selby Jr, the Nuremberg Trials, a clip from the documentary Hookers, Hustlers, Pimps and their Johns, etc. Serving as a brief reprieve from the sonic assault and schizophrenic lyrics about everything from abortion to the Holocaust to child prostitution, and almost every shitty topic in between.

The samples also serve as a narrative introduction to each song, providing some context to the song that follows. More crucially, they give the album a sense of continuity that might be lost without them. Like so many great pieces of art, I can’t tell you how it works or why it resonates with me, only that it does.

Frankly, The Holy Bible is a masterpiece.

And in what seems so typical of masterpieces when they are released, The Holy Bible was met with a deafening shrug.

It would take the disappearance of Richey Edwards for people to notice the album.

In February of 1995, the morning of a planned PR trip to the United States with James Dean Bradfield, Edwards checked out of his hotel at 7am without notice. Three days later his car was discovered near the Severn Bridge, which was known to be a suicide spot. A car park attendant reported it had been there for three days; a police search of the car revealed that it had been lived in for a few days.

Edwards was never seen again.

It’s the tragedy of Edwards illnesses and untimely disappearance that helped the Manic Street Preachers find their voice and audience. Doubling up on the tragedy was that even though The Holy Bible is a true blue rock and roll record, it went virtually unnoticed here. At the time American audiences were beginning to tire of grunge and introspectively angry music and, for a myriad of reasons, were beginning to lap up and embrace more benign and innocuous rock acts like the Dave Matthews Band and Hooty and the Blowfish.

With the Edwards family blessing, the band soldiered on.

Manic Street Preachers followed The Holy Bible with Everything Must Go. Released a month after Kurt Cobain’s suicide, Everything Must Go contained a nod to an acoustic, softer side, including “Small Black Flowers That Grow In the Sky” and contained a creative leap that few bands can even fathom. The album was a massive success in the UK and was even shortlisted for the coveted and much respected Mercury Prize.

Even though both albums were deserving of the attention they received in their native land, neither The Holy Bible nor Everything Must Go resonated with, what many consider to be the holy grail of rock music, the American audience.

11 studio albums later, three compilations, a host of singles, ep’s and covers later, the band has maintained, and even grown, their success in their homeland and Europe but still haven’t reached the kind of world-wide success their work warrants.

If you’re American and you like rock and roll, they’re probably the best band you don’t know about.

Manic Street Preachers have produced the type of consistently excellent music that most bands would kill to have one or two albums of.

However, consistently excellent doesn’t always beget artistic variance. But, AC/DC has built a 40 year career out of canvasing well traversed rock and roll tropes.

For me, an artistic pivot point for the band was 2007's release Send Away The Tigers. Maintaining the distinctive Manic’s sound, lyrically there is maturity that replaces some of the angry idealism of their earlier work. “Your Love Alone Is Not Enough”, a duet with Cardigans singer Nina Perrson, is a particular highlight (and should have been a massive worldwide hit).

Throughout Send Away The Tigers, the band shows growth while retaining its political ideology and distinctive sound. Songs like “The Second Great Depression” are particularly interesting; as is their vitriol for American policies (a consistent theme for the band), on songs like “Imperial Bodybags”. Nicky Wire said, “Imperial Bodybags is another view of America. We castigate Americans as thick, evangelical idiots and it’s unfair. So the song is just about the obvious — when an American soldier comes home from Iraq in a coffin, his people feel it just as bad as anyone else’s. Not everyone is an American Idiot.”

Something tells me this type of criticism of American politics and policies might play a role as to why the band hasn’t been able to get a foothold here in the United States. The fact they don’t tour here certainly doesn’t help, but at this stage in their career I am not sure breaking into America is that much of a priority for them.

Of course, die-hard American geek fans, like myself, might like to see them on this side of the pond more than once every ten years.

Eventually, I tracked down Rewind The Film and, despite it’s title, it is anything but a rewind for the band. The distinctive push and pull and pugnacious nature of the music and lyrics is present. This fight between music and lyrics is one of the things that makes Manic Street Preachers one of the more interesting and exciting rock and roll bands.

The album opens with a one two punch. The acoustic bleakness of “This Sullen Welsh Heart” is followed by the more joyous Spanish trumpets in “Show Me The Wonder”. The rest of the album shows a band growing up. Not a bad thing at all.

Rewind The Film has a slightly more mature Manics sound, without deviating from their own sonic template while still retaining the distinctive Manics attitude. No easy task for a band, especially after 25 years. Just ask The Rolling Stones.

Is Rewind The Film the band standing firmly in middle age and reflecting back? That’s certainly my take on it. And aren’t we all doing that? You certainly don’t want to get stuck there and that’s not something the band could ever be accused of. I like to think good artists reflect back to move forward. Great artists, like Manic Street Preachers, do it without thinking about it.

What can I say about the album? Nothing, really. If you like the band, you’ll like the album.

The best thing about Rewind The Film?
Manic Street Preachers aren’t re-inventing the wheel.

They also know they don’t need to.

Manic Street Preacher Spotify Playlist