The Manic Street Preachers

Manic Street Preachers have always been a band of very specific charms, something that has not translated outside of the U.K. particularly well. Although it boasts a generous 20 tracks, the 2002 compilation Forever Delayed isn't likely to change that situation, even if it has the lion's share of their big singles, since a band devoted to sloganeering doesn't play outside of their province, or era, without some knowledge of their context…

A Manic Millennium: On Millennium Eve, 31st December 1999, Manic Street Preachers played the biggest headline show of their career at Cardiff's Millennium Stadium.
In front of a sold out crowd of 60,000 Manics fans who had traveled from all corners of the globe for this event, the band played a set of twenty songs including their recent number one 'Masses Against The Classes'.

”Lifeblood” is the seventh studio album by Manic Street Preachers. It was recorded at studios in New York, Wales and Ireland by Tony Visconti, Tom Elmhirst and frequent collaborator Greg Haver. Released on November 1, 2004 and preceded by the number two single "The Love of Richard Nixon," the album entered the UK Albums Chart at #13 and only spent two weeks in the top 75.

Like many long-term relationships, Manic Street Preachers benefited from some time apart, as their seventh album, Send Away the Tigers, makes plain. Arriving on the heels of 2006 solo albums from both singer/guitarist James Dean Bradfield and lyricist/bassist Nicky Wire, Send Away the Tigers finds the group recharged and revitalized, achieving the widescreen grandeur of Everything Must Go but infusing it with a harder rock edge that may not be as furious as their earliest work, but is no less committed.