Album of the Day-April 22
Manic Street Preachers — The Holy Bible
Manic Street Preachers — The Holy Bible
22 April 2020
Manic Street Preachers
The Holy Bible
1994
Welsh band and childhood friends, Manic Street Preachers have never been in short supply of testicular fortitude or hubris. Some may think that naming your third album after perhaps the most sacred text in western culture, The Holy Bible, to be bold — but not so much for the Manics.
Written and recorded while rhythm guitarist and lyricist Richie Edwards was battling depression, self-harm, alcohol abuse, and anorexia. The Holy Bible is lyrically a look into a man’s struggle with mental health issues. The album is as uplifting as Darren Aronofsky’s film Requiem For A Dream. And lead guitarist James Dean Bradfield, bassist Nicky Wire, and drummer Sean Moore created music that is a type of claustrophobic freneticism that works in perfection with the lyrics.
The albums first single, “Faster”, sounds like a blistering rock song, but lyrically dives headfirst into self-hatred and depression:
Sleep can’t hide the thoughts splitting through my mind
Shadows aren’t clean, false mirrors too many people awake
If you stand up like a nail then you will be knocked down
I’ve been too honest with myself
I should have lied like everybody else
It’s a powerful record and not for the faint of heart but it’s that rarest of rare rock albums.
The Holy Bible is flawless — sadly, it’s also the sound of a young man falling apart.
The album uses various audio clips to bridge songs and as precursors to the songs themselves. They include:
“Of Walking Abortion” includes an interview with Hubert Selby, Jr — author of Requiem For A Dream.
“Archives of Pain” includes the words of the mother of English serial killer Pete Sutcliff aka the Yorkshire Ripper.
“The Intense Humming of Evil” includes audio from the Nuremberg trials.
The song “4st 7lbs” — the weight by which death is reputed to become medically unavoidable for anorexics +/- 63 lbs — includes dialogue from the 1994 documentary about anorexia, Caraline’s Story. The song’s title The lyrics peel back the curtain behind anorexic thinking:
I want to be so skinny that I rot from view
I want to walk in the snow
And not leave a footprint
I want to walk in the snow
And not soil its purity“Yes” includes dialogue from the 1993 documentary Hookers, Hustlers, Pimps and their John
Arguably this album serves as a living document to one person’s struggle with mental health. In February 1995, six months after The Holy Bible’s release, Richey Edwards went missing. He has not been seen or heard from since and was eventually declared deceased in 2008.
The three remaining members continued and found great success but still play with a space on stage where Richey would stand.
By default or design, Manic Street Preachers never found a large audience in America (but a dedicated and fervent one). And over time critics have warmed to The Holy Bible and it’s now considered one of the best albums of all time by British magazines, Q, Melody Maker, and NME.