Review Summary: Two words : Motorcycle Emptiness.
But seriously, if you like Guns n Roses but wish they were more left-wing, check this out. The album is a little bit bloated, though.
Try and get the version with Motown Junk and Suicide is Painless on it.
This album came out the day I was born - February 10, 1992. So maybe I have a natural affinity with it.
Manic Street Preachers are a rock band from south Wales, UK, who are known for their outspoken political views. Disclaimer : They are pretty left-wing, so if that isn't your thing you may be put off a bit. However, look beyond that and there is no doubt the quality of songwriting and musicianship here is very high.
Even so, no matter what your politics are, can anybody deny the message of Motorcycle Emptiness - consumerism destroys our humanity. That seems a no-brainer to me, and it is proven correct every time you look at an advertisment billboard or watch a TV commercial.
Politics aside - James Dean Bradfield is a massively underrated guitar player. Like Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins, it seems it's impossible to gain full recognition as a great guitar player by many unless one plays a certain type of metal. Some of the solos (For example on You Love Us) are as accomplished as any by Slash or any other guitar god you care to mention. He is also a very competent singer and has a range that can go very high before using the head voice or falsetto voice, which is very impressive. The Welsh are known for their singing (think Tom Jones, Charlotte Church, Katherine Jenkins) and Bradfield is another in that long line - yet hardly ever spoken about.
Onto the music. There's one flaw with this album - the second half. The first 7 songs are great - particularly Slash n Burn and Motorcycle Emptiness - but after that there is some genuinely bad filler in here. The album is just too long and quite a few of these tracks could easily have been left off. I can't even remember what the songs on the second half of the album are called, they're that forgettable.
There is one good song from the second half, Condemned to Rock n Roll, which contains some of MSP's heaviest riffage and is a juggernaut of brilliantly produced heavy rock music.
The production of the whole album is always stellar, particularly on the album's centrepiece Motorcycle Emptiness, where the lush keyboards in the background really fill out the song. It sounds like a stadium-filling anthem. Then there's that killer guitar bendy hook that drifts up and down the fretboard.
Motorcycle Emptiness is many fan's favourite MSP song. It deals with consumerism and capitalism as I mentioned above. "From feudal serf to spender / This wonderful world of purchase power / Under neon loneliness / Motorcycle Emptiness / Everlasting nothingness."
What's more, on the version of the song on Generation Terrorists, it lasts the full 6 minutes and there's the extra solos at the end that the single edit cuts out. Motorcycle Emptiness is my choice cut from this album and if you do listen to the song, find the 6 minute version.
The extended version of the album also contains MSP's cover of the theme from the TV show M*A*S*H, 'Suicide is Painless', which is always a laugh for parties and weddings alike. I kid, I kid, but it is a worthy cover of a funny song. They make it a bit heavier and rockier. Well worth checking out.
Motorcycle Emptiness is up there with A Design For Life as the Manics' best song. Anthemic and epic. I can't recommend this song enough. If you check out one song from this band, make sure it's Motorcycle. Design for Life is also pretty epic but I imagine if you're American it might go over your head a bit - whereas Motorcycle is more palatable to U.S. ears, given it sounds like Guns n Roses. Design for Life is about the struggle of the British working class and how they don't help themselves in the struggle, by being ignorant and pretty feckless. It's like a lament of the poor of the UK. If you watch the video you may understand - footage of the 1984 miner's strike, etc.
Sorry to seem condescending, but the vast majority of Americans I have talked to don't even know where the UK is, so I find it best to approach these things assuming a position of complete ignorance on the U.S. side of this equation. =P
There is one other flaw with this album and that is the lyrics are sometimes a bit cringeworthy. Nicky Wire, the bassist, and Richey James Edwards, the rhythm guitarist and in-band manic depressive, both wrote the lyrics while Bradfield handles the guitar and vocals. Sean Moore, Bradfield's cousin, lays down all the drums and does a fine job, though there is extensive use of drum machine here. In many ways Generation Terrorists is a Bradfield solo effort, but it doesn't suffer as a result of that. The guy is extraordinarily talented and what's more, in the early 90s, was buff as ***. Check it out on Google Images. He was ripped.
But onto the lyrics, and Nicky Wire / Richey Edwards' input. They are too political and too protest-y. They sound like the kind of phrases 1st year university students (That's 'college freshmen' to you Yanks) would write as a joke in the student union toilets. In the politics department. Or in the Trotskyist club.
Often the lines don't rhyme : "Your love is like a holocaust / Same P.R. problem as S.E.S.E." and contain very strange words that are not sung easily : "Itemise loathing and feed yourself smiles / Orthodox dreams and symbolic myths."
You can't really envisage thousands of people singing along to most of this stuff.
There's also in general a kind of not-fun vibe about the Manic Street Preachers. They don't seem to be having any fun at all, which is kind of the whole reason kids form rock bands - is it not? At a concert, how much super-indignant political lecturing and protesting can you really indulge in before you may as well chuck the guitars and just run for parliament?
Personally I find it more than a little bit naff when musicians stray into the political arena. Some of the songs hit the nail on the head though, of a worthy cause - Motorcycle Emptiness, obtusely worded though it is, at least has a point.
However more than a couple of the songs mention suicide and they even cover Suicide Is Painless. Given Richey James Edwards did commit suicide in 1995, it's all just a tad on the grim side. Cheer up, guys. Yes the world is ***ed up.... but jesus. At least there is a world and you are in it. No?
So if you can ignore the lyrics (they are really hard to make out anyway) and ignore the second half of Generation Terrorists, you have on your hands what the follow-up to Appetite for Destruction should have sounded like.
In summary :
Motorcycle Emptiness is amazing ; the album is a bit long ; the lyrics are often pretty obscure and cliched ; the second half of the album sucks, but Motorcycle Emptiness makes up for it.
Did i mention that Motorcycle Emptiness is a great song? Yeah.
3.5 because the first half is so worthy, and the second half you can just forget.
After all nobody judges 2001 : A Space Odessey based on the half-hour acid trip thing at the end, do they? Same rules apply.
Choice Cuts :
Motorcycle Emptiness
Others :
Slash n Burn
Barclays-NatWest-Midlands-Lloyds
You Love Us
Born To End
Condemned to Rock n Roll
Suicide is Painless
