The Holy Bible (1994)

The Holy Bible is the third studio album by Welsh alternative rock band Manic Street Preachers, released on 29 August 1994 by Epic Records. While the album was being written and recorded, lyricist and rhythm guitarist Richey Edwards was struggling with severe depression, alcohol abuse, self-harm and anorexia nervosa, and its contents are considered by many sources to reflect his mental state. The songs focus on themes relating to politics and human suffering. The Holy Bible was the band's last album released before Edwards' disappearance on 1 February 1995, consequently becoming their last studio album as a four-piece band.

Although it reached number 6 in the UK Albums Chart, initially, global sales were disappointing compared to previous albums and the record did not chart in mainland Europe or North America. It was promoted with tours and festival appearances in the UK, Ireland, Germany, Portugal, the Netherlands and Thailand – in part without Edwards. The Holy Bible received widespread acclaim from critics and has sold over half a million copies worldwide as of 2014. It has frequently been featured and listed highly on lists of the best albums of all time by British music publications such as Melody Maker, NME and Q.

Recording

According to drummer Sean Moore, the band felt they had been "going a bit astray" with their previous album, 1993's Gold Against the Soul, and so the approach to the follow-up was for the band to go back to their "grass roots" and rediscover "a little bit of Britishness that we lacked". Singer and guitarist James Dean Bradfield recalls the band feeling they had become "a bit too rockist [...] we had lost our direction". After the band's first two albums had been dominated by influences such as Guns N' Roses and Alice in Chains, the band decided that the new material should be influenced by the artists that inspired them when they first formed, including Magazine, Wire, Skids, Public Image Ltd, Gang of Four, Joy Division, Siouxsie and the Banshees, and early Simple Minds.

Epic Records had proposed that the album be recorded in Barbados, but the band had wanted to avoid what Bradfield called "all that decadent rockstar rubbish". It was bassist Nicky Wire's idea, says Bradfield, that the band "should not use everything at its disposal" in recording the album. Instead, recording began with sound engineer Alex Silva at the low-rent, "absolutely tiny" Sound Space Studios in Cardiff. The album was mixed by Mark Freegard, who had previously worked with the Breeders. "She Is Suffering" was produced by Steve Brown. The recording took four weeks.

Bradfield has described the recording of the album as preventing him from having a social life and Alex Silva attributes the break-up of his relationship with his girlfriend at the time to the long hours involved in the recording. Guitarist Richey Edwards attended recording sessions but would, according to Wire, "collapse on the settee and have a snooze" while the other band members did all the recording. He was drinking heavily and frequently crying. "Inevitably", says Bradfield, "the day would start with a 'schhht!'; the sound of a can opening."

The album was constructed with "academic discipline", according to Bradfield, with the band working to headings and structures "so each song is like an essay".

Content

Lyrics

Whereas lyric-writing on the two previous albums was split fairly evenly between Richey Edwards and Nicky Wire, the lyrics on The Holy Bible were 70–75% written by Edwards, according to James Dean Bradfield. At the time of the album's 10th anniversary reissue Wire claimed to be largely responsible for "Ifwhiteamericatoldthetruthforonedayit'sworldwouldfallapart" (which cites the actor River Phoenix in the lines 'Big Mac / Smack / Phoenix, R. / Please smile, y'all') and "This Is Yesterday", contributing only titles to some of the other songs. However, on later inspection of his notebooks, Wire was surprised to find he had contributed more lyrics than he had previously remembered, having also written portions of "Of Walking Abortion" and "Mausoleum" and some lines from "Faster". He now believed himself responsible for around 30% of the words on the album.

The album's lyrics deal with subjects including prostitution, American consumerism, British imperialism, freedom of speech, the Holocaust, self-starvation, serial killers, the death penalty, political revolution, childhood, fascism and suicide. According to Q: "the tone of the album is by turns bleak, angry and resigned". The same magazine commented in 1994 that "even a cursory glance at the titles will confirm that this is not the new Gloria Estefan album".