Manic Street Preachers - The Holy Bible (1994)

Manic Street Preachers: The Holy Shit What A Pretentious Album Title. There better be a good reason for that.

I'm feeling content out of the gate. It's looking like Manic Street Preachers are a mid-90s grunge-ish band with an alternative/punky flavor, which doesn't bother me as much as some other mid-90s acts I've listened to. They're definitely angsty about something, and what I said about pretention feels accurate. The second song is named "Ifwhiteamericatoldthetruthforonedayit'sworldwouldfallapart" and features this bizarre lyric: "Zapruder... the first to masturbate!" At least that's what I hope he said. Whatever it was I'm going to be stuck pondering what the hell that sentence means for the rest of my life. When did Oliver Stone's JFK appear in theaters? Maybe it comes from that.

The first three four five SIX songs on the album start with samples of people talking that sound like cuts off an old radio. I find this to be a cliched trick to make a song sound more epic or poignant. Since the lyrics are often difficult to understand it's tough to tell whether these cuts have anything to do with the music. The music is decent enough for mid-90s grunge. The riffs are kind of chunky and all over the place, but I don't feel like I've heard this music before. The sound isn't all that revolutionary, but the band knows how to mix up the beat to keep the music relatively fresh.

I don't know. The riffs and singing weren't all that special, but I liked it I guess. It's slightly better and less phony than what Green Day has been doing for ever, so that's a positive. 3 stars... though I still haven't figured out what this album has to do with Jesus.