Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7/10

You can’t argue with the music, the sentiment and the ability, you can however feel that an element of what went before is missing, consigned perhaps to not being part of the moment or the future, and when that happens it calls into question the reasons and objections you may have in your own mind to how a band or artist will continue on in that vein.

There is no doubting the seismic passion that has run through the entire Manic Street Preacher’s back catalogue, the importance they have played in raising issues, the often incredible songs that have come forth and sit with the listener as if contributing to the alienating, senseless hole in their stomach and lives, not in a way of deceit but in a positive union, understanding that those that listen or are touched by their words, feel the pain completely in which the band divest their thoughts upon.

It is though a passion that seems to have been bypassed without ceremony in the band’s latest album Resistance Is Futile, an avoidance of the very ethos into which the Manic Street Preacher’s have strode to impart across all the albums and years in which they have been part of the fabric of society, let alone that of the music scene.

It will be argued in some quarters that after so long at the top, eventually the desire may begin to dwindle, after all the group have nothing to prove, they are and remain one of the greats of the last three decades and yet it can only be hoped that this particular album is not the first sign of that decline, that it is a blip, one that still carries weight and meaning, but in which the enormous confidence in which they have enjoyed, has become a mark in which the end was in sight.

There are nuggets, gold pieces within the album to be found, in songs such as Dylan and Caitlin, Liverpool Revisited and The Left Behind, the band remain committed to that constant thread of social interest and playing with exquisitely damned imagery, however, few and far between stands the testament of the aware and the approval of the okay.

You can never argue with the music, but Time is a relentless beast and often its teeth remain intact when it has bitten down and starts to draw blood from the soul.

Ian D. Hall