• Manic Street Preachers @ Olympia Theatre, Dublin

    December 14, 2014 - By 

    You sometimes have to wonder if people do these “Let’s play the album everyone likes” shows in order to destroy the album. If you’ve made one truly significant album in your lifetime, fair deuce to you, but after a while it must feel like a noose. If you were to do such a show, how would you do it? Could you do it in such a way that puts this awful beauty that hangs over you to rest, while not screwing over the people who’ve connected themselves to the record and provided the opportunity for you to perform this show?…

  • Horror songs: The Intense Humming Of Evil

    October 30, 2013 - By 

    There is no denying that the Manic Street Preachers’ third album, The Holy Bible, is a distressing listen. The album represents some of the final days of Richey James Edwards and gives us an insight into a mind that is as unsettling as it is compelling. Edwards penned songs about self-destruction, societal breakdown and the holocaust with a level of poeticism seldom seen in rock music. This poeticism gives way to terror on more than one occasion and is best typified with the gut-curdling holocaust themed ‘The Intense Humming Of Evil’. We begin with the sound of clanging metal and gaseous release. We begin…