Manic Street Preachers

Does a relatively unloved album from the Welsh rockers’ glam-metal phase get kisses second time around?

Belated repackage for the Welsh rockers in their uneven glam-metal phase.

History has judged the Manic Street Preachers’ second album harshly since its 1993 release. Under pressure from their label following the commercial flop of their heavily hyped debut Generation Terrorists, the Welsh rockers made a calculated swing away from politically charged neo-punk to more radio-friendly glam-metal in Guns N’ Roses mode, with some success but little conviction. Unloved by hardcore fans and often disdained by the Manics themselves, Gold Against The Soul is belatedly getting the expanded remaster treatment in this deluxe two-disc package.

In fairness, age has not dimmed From Despair To Where, Life Becoming A Landslide and La Tristesa Durera (Scream To A Sigh), soulful anthems of doomed youth and triumphant defeat couched in warmer classic-rock clothes than the band’s previous releases. The lyrics are also interesting historically as cautionary markers of Richey Edwards’s deepening depression and mental health issues, although his anguished postcards from the abyss often jar with the album’s overripe pop-metal polish. Too many of the tracks here still feel like unfocused juvenilia and unconvincing pastiche.

Given its source material, the extra disc of bonus tracks, remixes, demo recordings and previously unreleased off-cuts is inevitably uneven. Dark, snarly B-sides like Comfort Comes and the American Psychoinspired Patrick Bateman point towards the savage intensity of The Holy Bible, although challenging lyrics like ‘I fucked God up the ass’ are buried beneath incongruously smooth hair-metal arrangements. But a clutch of single remixes by the Chemical Brothers and others stand up surprisingly well, expanding Roses In The Hospital and La Tristesa Durera into muscular electro-funk epics without diluting Bradfield’s operatic vocal prowess.

Among the newly rediscovered demos, early sketches for La Tristesa Durera and Life Becoming A Landslide have a pleasingly organic rawness and lightness missing from the album versions. But only the most charitable, completist Manics devotee will welcome inferior versions of already weak songs like Drug Drug Druggy and Nostalgic Pushead.

With an eye-watering price tag of 50 pounds for a measly two discs, the Manics and their label have ensured this unwieldy album will remain hard to love. History can be a harsh judge, but sometimes it is right. Not enough gold for the soul here, too much tin for the bin. ■■■■■■■■■■