{"id":672542,"date":"2026-09-04T16:47:21","date_gmt":"2026-09-04T16:47:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/672542\/"},"modified":"2026-09-04T16:47:21","modified_gmt":"2026-09-04T16:47:21","slug":"manic-street-preachers-tell-us-about-their-vicious-the-holy-bible-live-album-and-film","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/672542\/","title":{"rendered":"Manic Street Preachers tell us about their “vicious” ‘The Holy Bible’ live album and film"},"content":{"rendered":"

Manic Street Preachers<\/a> have announced details of a new live album celebrating their seminal \u2018The Holy Bible\u2019, along with the long-awaited release of Kieran Evans\u2019 concert film Be Pure, Be Vigilant, Behave and a Steven Wilson<\/a> spatial audio remix of the original record. Check out all the details below along with our interview with Nicky Wire<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In 2014, off the back of the huge success and acclaim of their 12th album \u2018Futurology\u2019<\/a>, the Welsh rock icons finally felt they had licence to revisit their cult classic third LP \u2018The Holy Bible\u2019 by playing it in full for the first (and probably last) time. In full military garb as they were in \u201994, the Manics were on fine and furious form. The UK shows were captured by their now longtime visual collaborator and BAFTA-winning director Kieran Evans for the film Be Pure, Be Vigilant, Behave \u2013 its title taken from a lyric to closing track \u2018P.C.P.\u2019.<\/p>\n

Now, the Manics have announced that they\u2019ll be releasing \u2018The Holy Bible Live\u2019 on October 23 across various formats, with the live album accompanied by Evans\u2019 concert film and a new Steven Wilson spatial audio mix of the original 1994 album. The release will be available as a 2 x 12\u201d and 3 CD deluxe edition, 2 x blue marble 12\u201d vinyl, CD+video BluRay and on digital platforms, and is available to pre-order here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u2018The Holy Bible Live\u2019 was mixed by producer Dave Eringa recorded across the three nights played at the Roundhouse in London \u2013 a venue chosen for its similarity to now-lost Astoria, where the band played their final shows with guitarist and lyricist Richey Edwards. Edwards disappeared a few weeks later in 1995 ahead of a US promotional tour and has not been seen since. He was officially declared dead in 2008<\/a> in order to settle his affairs with his family.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2019The Holy Bible\u2019 is a record that still sort of scares me at times as an investigation of the soul,\u201d bassist and lyricist Nicky Wire told NME. \u201cI never wanted to go that far, but it\u2019s a good thing to feel and to revisit that at times. A lot of the live album is a tribute to Richey. When you think back to that point, we\u2019d done three albums in three years, and then his lyrics also hang over \u2018Everything Must Go\u2019, and we were working with such speed of intensity. It gives me such a special feeling that people are hearing these words 30 years later.\u201d<\/p>\n

To match the album\u2019s darkly poetic lyrics and shocking subject matter about the Holocaust, eating disorders, prostitution of the self, the evils of man and the spiralling mental health of guitarist and lyricist Richey Edwards, the gigs were shot and edited with a brutal intensity. The film originally premiered back in 2016 but has not received a full release until now.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo start with, there was never a \u2018plan\u2019 to make a concert film,\u201d Evans previously told NME<\/a>. \u201cI just wanted to document each show as I felt they were just too important for the band not to have a record of.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery night, there was was a palpable nervous tension in the air as the audience waited. The lights dimmed, stage lights strobed and then those familiar sampled words \u2018You can buy her, you can buy her, this ones here, this ones here, everything is for sale\u2026\u2018 began to fill the air and the chopped guitar lines of \u2018Yes\u2019 sprang out. The audience roared, the lights exploded and suddenly we were off\u2026and in that moment I knew I was witnessing something incredibly special and life-changing.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m glad I had my camera with me.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"ManicManic Street Preachers perform at The Roundhouse on December 15, 2014 in London, United Kingdom. (Photo by Edu Hawkins\/Redferns via Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Speaking about the challenge of the shows, frontman James Dean Bradfield<\/a> said he \u201cwanted to prove that we were still a band tough enough to play \u2018The Holy Bible’\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wanted to prove to people that being on stage and hammering it through together like a military unit was still part of us,\u201d he admitted. \u201cWe still have that muscle memory, that badge of honour. We knew there would be a reflex reaction to doing something like this \u2013 people looking at the record and your performance through a prism of the past. \u2019It\u2019s not quite got the spark I was hoping for.\u2019 Proving those people wrong \u2013 disproving cynics- massively powered me on.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bradfield added: \u201cWhen we played the album, I felt like I was wearing a different mask. I didn\u2019t feel as if I had to completely connect with all the lyrics, I just needed to mainline into the energy of it all. And that felt good \u2013 it felt good for us to be a piece of rock \u2019n\u2019 roll theatre. It felt good to be close to that power again.\u201d<\/p>\n

NME caught up with Nicky Wire earlier this week, in the midst of a \u201cquiet year\u201d off the back of their 2025 album \u2018Critical Thinking\u2019<\/a>\u00a0and ahead of their winter co-headline UK tour with Suede<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve just been doing a few shows in Europe, some nice festivals, and trying to write some new songs,\u201d said Wire. \u201cWe\u2019re just rehearsing existing, really. We\u2019re not interested in thriving \u2013 surviving will do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Check out the rest of our interview with Wire below, where he told NME about the new release, memories of 1994, and what to expect from new material in the works.<\/p>\n

NME. Hello Nicky. Seeing as we\u2019ve just had Reading Festival<\/a> and you played a legendary show there for \u2018The Holy Bible\u2019 back in \u201994, what do you remember about your time in that field?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Nicky Wire:<\/strong> \u201cIt was incredibly tense and slightly stressful that we had to do it as a three-piece because Richey was in The Priory at that point and we did need to pay bills, but we did have such a sense of wild abandon and ferocious discipline that it was an amazing show. The crowd was massive. It did feel something had happened; I don\u2019t know what. \u2018Faster\u2019 had been out, \u2018Revol\u2019 had been out, the album was coming out, but people seemed to want to be there. We had the full \u2018The Holy Bible\u2019 regalia, and it was just fucking vicious. It was a peak of sorts.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"ManicManic Street Preachers at Reading 1994 (Photo by Mick Hutson\/Redferns)<\/p>\n

What was it like to be in that version of the Manics in \u201994, going to war on stage and every night?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a badge of honour, but it was starting to get quite\u2026 \u2018grim\u2019 isn\u2019t the word. We\u2019d done our own shows and played with Suede and Therapy in Europe. We\u2019d offered to Richey that we could cancel or do them as a three-piece but he was determined to do them. We were all slightly unravelling at that point and the whole thing had become something of a self-fulfilling prophecy. The shows themselves were still brutal. We inhabited ourselves and were like no other band around at that point.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was still brilliant to get on stage, but culminating with those three shows at The Astoria there was a sense of auto-destruction as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

There was official footage from the Astoria shows in 1994 that was made into music videos Do you have the rest and do you think it\u2019ll ever see the light of day?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cTo be honest, I\u2019ve seen what you\u2019ve seen. I\u2019ve got bootlegs from people with camcorders and there\u2019s not much more apart from the memories of paying off the debts. You can piece together bits and pieces. Radio One recorded some of those shows, and that\u2019s out there. There\u2019s nothing left really, apart from the debris. We\u2019ve got some of the smashed guitars and stuff!<\/p>\n

\u201cI did find a box of photos by [legendary photographer and fellow NME Godlike Genius winner<\/a>] Pennie Smith. There are these remarkable pictures of us backstage, and there are a couple of them in the box-set that\u2019s coming out. Whenever Pennie turned up, we respected her so much that we\u2019d always be on best behaviour and do whatever she asked us to do. There\u2019s so much humanity in these pictures before we go on stage. We were really close and comfortable with each other, even though it was particularly tense when we got on stage.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n<\/blockquote>\n

To decide to play the album in full in 2014, what was it like as a band to embody that mindset and recreate these songs and be in \u2018Bible\u2019 mode?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cI was really reticent. I didn\u2019t think I had the ferocious discipline that you need. People don\u2019t quite understand the reason we don\u2019t play the songs very often is because you just can\u2019t fake them. You can\u2019t glide. It\u2019s not like \u2018You Love Us\u2019 where I can put my guitar down and skip for 20 seconds \u2013 with \u2018The Holy Bible\u2019, you\u2019ve got to be absolutely on it. They are really difficult to play, and you\u2019ve got to feel that sense of venom and slight nastiness.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wasn\u2019t sure of myself, but James really loved the challenge of it and to prove that we could still be that band. We had to go for it really full-on with the camouflage, the outfits, and to really dig deep into our former selves. We hadn\u2019t done that for a long time. By the end of the tour, it really paid off. It was pretty overwhelming with so many of those fans singing those words back to us. With the amount of words and the meaning of them, it was really gratifying. Part of doing the tour was just to make sure people remembered Richey\u2019s lyrics.\u201d<\/p>\n

Are you still finding new generations of fans getting into the Manics via this album, just as they might with Joy Division<\/a>\u2018s \u2018Unknown Pleasures\u2019,\u00a0 Nirvana<\/a>\u2018s \u2018In Utero\u2019 and other dark albums like that?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cYou can see it through streaming patterns and stuff like that; it\u2019s just a cult album. It\u2019s got so much depth and intellectual worth to it. It\u2019s like reading a great novel or something. You\u2019re always going to be able to go back to it and get something new out of it. I\u2019m glad it\u2019s in this genre because some of our records are liked just because they\u2019re incredibly popular. It\u2019s nice to have records that go down a deeper angle.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"RicheyRichey Edwards performing with Manic Street Preachers in 1994 (Photo by Mick Hutson\/Redferns)<\/p>\n

You\u2019ve worked solely with Kieran Evans for your music videos, documentaries and stage production for over a decade now. What is it about your shared aesthetic language, and how does that translate into this film?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cMe and him were just talking at some point and said that we really need to record this in some way, but we were both really reticent about making it big or widescreen. He just said, \u2018Look, we\u2019ll do it with two or three blocked-off cameras; we\u2019ll film every night and just try to capture it\u2019. The shared aesthetic is really important because Kieran occupies the same mindset, in terms of musical and visuals. The ferocity of those shows just comes across so well in the film. As someone who suffers from migraines, sometimes it feels like you\u2019re watching a migraine.\u201d<\/p>\n

It certainly feels like an onslaught of images and noise, with a sort of Clockwork Orange effect\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cIt does. I get slightly bored playing bass, and I\u2019ve just got to concentrate so hard to play those songs and lock in with Sean\u2019s amazing drum patterns again. You\u2019ve really got to disassociate with the music, but when the fans actually started singing back tracks like \u2018Mausoleum\u2019, it kind of warms the heart. There is some humanity in the film when you see the fans singing along, which I didn\u2019t expect.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not the sort of thing that happened the first time because it was such a different era. We probably only played about five or six of these songs at each gig in \u201894. It\u2019s not like we were playing the whole album, and we\u2019ve barely played that many \u2018Holy Bible\u2019 songs since really \u2013 and I doubt we\u2019ll play them again because it is a state of mind and you can\u2019t fake those songs. The crowd know straight away. You\u2019ve got to have that overall intensity, and you can see it in the film.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s method-acting, isn\u2019t it?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cIt is, and James loves all that shit. It did make me realise what an amazing musician James is \u2013 the vocal melody compared to the guitar melody and the amount of words he\u2019s trying to cram in, it\u2019s pretty awesome to watch.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s rare for a band make a live album from an anniversary tour. What made you decide to do so?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cEvery about \u201894 feels really claustrophobic and in your face with the album and the gigs, but when we played back the recording of this it just felt more like a Steve Albini recording. There\u2019s more space in it and the songs are more muscular. It was really spine-tingling. I was pushing more for the visual but James was adamant that we record the audio even if we never fucking released it because we\u2019re never going to do this again.\u201d<\/p>\n

And you\u2019ve been sitting on it for all this time?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cYes, and that\u2019s my bad. We wanted to release two years ago for the 30th anniversary of \u2018The Holy Bible\u2019, but we were on such a flow with \u2018Critical Thinking\u2019 that we didn\u2019t have time to get it together. Obviously now it\u2019s 32 years since it was released, which is a bit of an odd one.<\/p>\n

What can you tell us about the Steven Wilson spatial audio remix?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve listened to a lot of Steven\u2019s stuff and I like him as an artist. I find him really interesting anyway, from Porcupine<\/a> Tree to his solo stuff. It\u2019s the Rush<\/a> and the prog side of me, so we just thought it was worth giving him a shot. There\u2019s quite a lot of subtleties that were buried that have come through. It might not be everybody\u2019s cup of tea. He\u2019s not softened it, but there are a lot of nuances from the recordings that I forgot about. He\u2019s given it a nice slant, a sense of space and it breathes a bit more.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe vocals really are amazing. Now they seem rich and textured whereas sometimes they feel squashed and shouty. It\u2019s beautiful. It\u2019s like having a brand new mix of the album after going through all the master tapes. Some people might think it\u2019s unnecessary, but it\u2019s our stuff and I enjoyed listening to it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"ManicManic Street Preachers announce \u2018The Holy Bible Live\u2019. Credit: Press<\/p>\n

Do you imagine we\u2019ll be getting a bit more of the \u2018Bible\u2019 on the upcoming dates with Suede?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cI just don\u2019t know. I\u2019d like to think so. I\u2019d like to think we could do \u2018Faster\u2019 as it\u2019s such a landmark record and so underplayed.\u201d<\/p>\n

You\u2019ve shared on social media that you\u2019ve been writing new songs. How\u2019s that going?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cIt is a fine batch of songs: \u2018Threshold\u2019, Don\u2019t Be Afraid To Be Afraid\u2019, \u2018Recrudescence\u2019\u2026 I\u2019m just trying to find a thread to them at the moment that makes sense. We don\u2019t have any problem with inspiration for songs, it\u2019s just that the wherewithal to put it all together and release it gets harder. This is our 16th album, and that\u2019s a lot of records! I don\u2019t know any one of our contemporaries that has got close to that.<\/p>\n

Lyrically, what\u2019s inspiring you?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s hard to say. I just think trying to find ways to survive, and corridors and shelters of meaning. Trying to find a way to stay creative at our age is not the easiest thing to do while trying to mean it. If it doesn\u2019t feel important to us, then it isn\u2019t going to feel important to anyone else.\u201d<\/p>\n

The last time we spoke<\/a>, James said he wanted to make a \u201ccold and European\u201d album and record it in Hamburg. Is that still the plan?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cThe only combined thread is Echo & The Bunnymen<\/a> at the moment. From \u2018Heaven Up Here\u2019 through to \u2018Porcupine\u2019 and \u2018Ocean Rain\u2019, those three albums are the biggest inspiration at the moment: the sonic coldness of something like \u2018Heaven Up Here\u2019 and the rich tapestry of \u2018Ocean Rain\u2019. There are a lot of Bunnymenisms.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"ManicManic Street Preachers, 2025. Credit: Alex Lake<\/p>\n

Do you fancy a winter in Hamburg then?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cAlways, or there\u2019s a winter in Berlin. There\u2019s a choice of two studios. We\u2019ve got 10-14 songs, but everything just takes longer than it used to. Getting everyone together and recording, it\u2019s just harder now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Perhaps you should let Steven Wilson produce the album?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s not a bad shout. I will keep that in mind.\u201d<\/p>\n

Do you think we\u2019ll get some new songs on the Suede tour? <\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re literally reconvening for festivals now, so I\u2019m not entirely sure. Here\u2019s a beautiful version of Blondie\u2019s \u2018Union City Blue\u2019, which is sounding magnificent. We slip that in along with a new song. I wouldn\u2019t be too surprised.\u201d<\/p>\n

Manic Street Preachers release \u2018The Holy Bible Live\u2019 on October 24 before their UK co-headline arena tour with Suede kicks off, calling at Glasgow, Leeds, Manchester, Cardiff, London, Birmingham, Nottingham and Bournemouth. Visit here for tickets<\/a> and more information.\u00a0<\/p>\n