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“Riots! Revolution! ROCK N ROLL APOCALYPSE!” … Is exactly what the Manics would have had us believe they sounded like, before exploding across the early 90s rock scene with the slightly-iffy double album Generation Terrorists. 25 years after their supposedly epochal debut (the guys just forgot to split up afterwards. Or make a revolutionary art statement), here’s their thirteenth album.
First song, People Give In, starts badly by cruelly taunting the sadly-missed Stephen Hawking with the lyric ‘there is no theory of everything’. Steady on, lads. But then International Blue ups the pace some and slides in a sneakily insistent four bar keyboard riff and some sky-scraping guitar. It rocks. Plain and simple. ‘Are we living in the past?’ James Dean Bradfield asks on second single Distant Colours. Well, kinda. But when the past sounds as good as this, an epic, tastefully windswept slice of designer-rock, you know what? That’s okay.
Dylan and Caitlin, which features a duet with The Anchoress is fucking beautiful. Sequels of Forgotten Wars, from the portentous title down, is distilled essence du Manic: Sinewey MOR guitar riff? Check. Chunky power chords? Yup. Clunky but weighty lyrics? Tick. Greater than the sum of its parts? Give it a chance and you’re listening to a record that’s perhaps up there with the Manic’s best two or three and which, despite your best efforts, will probably weave its way into the background of your life, whether you want it to or not.
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