Die In The Summertime

Well, they don’t make them like this anymore, and that’s probably for the best as there’s only so many minutes that we can hold on to our sanity for when faced with such madness. The most Metal song on The Holy Bible, it’s another terrifying moment filled with shocking honesty and images of purity juxtaposed with stinking bile. The lead riff is as sinister as they come, Bradfield has never sounded more like a banshee, literally and metaphorically, the main solo is completely all over the place and all the better because of it, while the chorus is gloriously massive. Melodically wonderful throughout, the guttural mashing of vocals and ideas is such that a thousand fans’ throats have been permanently disfigured in its emulation.

Die In The Summertime: 4/Great

Misheard Lyrics: 1. Scratch my leg with a rusty nail, Sally it heals.

2. I can’t seem to stay a fixed idea

3. Show’s your pain, show’s rising/ Shoulder’s pain, she’s riding/Showed a pig she’s rotten.

4. Grope myself without bloated lines/Seek my without broken lies

5. Whole days throwing sticks at the seems

6: The hole in my life brings a stench of soil/The hole in my life – fever scares our soul (or fever scares us all, or fever scars our soul).

7. The heart breaks to barely a pulse

Actual Lyrics: 1. Scratch my leg with a rusty nail/Sadly it heals

2. I can’t seem to stay a fixed ideal.

3. Childhood pictures redeem.

4. See myself without ruining lines

5. Whole days throwing sticks into streams

6. The hole in my life even stains the soil

7. My heart shrinks to barely a pulse

The Story Of The Song: The song is another window into Richey’s mind at the time – his writing clearly concerned with regret, aging, and the loss of childhood. This was playing on Richey’s mind at the time and in one of the lesser noticed details of the album, there are many photographs of the band as children or younger adults included in the liner booklet. The lead character in the song wishes that he could make it to the summer time -the period which they most fondly associate with memories, childhood, comfort – and die. No matter how much the narrator tries to change themselves – colouring their hair, cutting their skin – they can not stop the process of aging any more than they can reverse it.

Revol

Revol: 3/Good 

(US Version)

The one song from The Holy Bible (aside from Faster) that always seems to get a run out during live performances – strange because the band, and James in particular, are always saying how much they hate it. If you absolutely must play something from The Holy Bible during live gigs, then there are plenty of others to choose from. Moaning aside, it is still a good song. Admittedly,  it’s one of my least favourite from the album but it still packs a punch, and does have that exquisite middle section which I believe to be one of the best things the band has ever written. Make of the lyrics what you will – a series of loose epithets or descriptions of political figures opposite sexual acts or deficiencies for the verses, followed by multi-lingual screams for the chorus. No-one writes songs like this, and no-one has the balls to make a single out of it. It almost feels like a light-hearted moment amidst the darkness of The Holy Bible and it certainly does break up the relentless gloom with a bout of much needed, questionable humour.

Misheard Lyrics: Missed a letter, oh, waken the boy!

2. Mr Stalin, buy sexually back/Mr Stalin, buy sexual a pack

3. Pushed chest, self love in his mirrors

4. Raging, very into group sex.

5. Get a job, sell myself self importance/Got a chop, sell a bit of his content

6. Yes sir, player, with his self importance/ Yeltsin playing with his own importance.

7. River! River!/Reaver! Reaver!

8: Life’s a cloud/Like a clown

9: Comfort comes (!)

10. Ross Ross!/Rush Rush!

11. Feel her feel her!/Feed her feed her!/ Fear fear!/ Fear Fuhrer!

12. Napoleon challenge wee hats

13. Jane Berlin (?) you see good in you

14. Trotsky honey won’t serenade the naked.

15. Shake her valley, your wrong target now.

16. American alimony alimony.

Actual Lyrics: Mr Lenin, awaken the boy

2. Mr Stalin, bi-sexual epoch

3. Kruschev, self love in his mirrors.

4. Brehnev, married into group sex

5. Gorbachev, celibate self importance

6. Yeltsin, failure is his own impotence. 

7: Revol! Revol!

8: Lebensraum

9: Kulturkampf.

10. Raus Raus!

11. Fila fila!

12. Napoleon childhood sweethearts

13. Chamberlain you see God in you

14. Trotsky honeymoon serenade the naked.

15. Che Guevara, you’re all target now.

16. Farrakhan alimony alimony. 

The Story Behind The Song: Does anybody know? ‘Revol’ is ‘Lover’ spelled backwards, and we know Richey had issues with ideas of love, relationships, sex – some of the lyrics are sexual in nature, others are political insults. The first verse lists 20th Century Russian leaders in order (skipping some) as if equating their rules to to their sexual or emotional maturity. Second verse it dances around Europe, South America, everywhere following a similar format. The chorus is chanting of German words used in Concentration Camps. The word ‘revol’… sounds a bit like revolt, or revolution. Yeah, I’m as clueless as everyone else.

The Intense Humming Of All Evil

The Intense Humming Of Evil: 4/Great

US Version

One of the most intense, bleak, terrifying songs ever recorded – it’s difficult to say whether I prefer the original or the US version, one feels more barren and hopeless, the other feels more sinister with its creeping undercurrent of godless whispers. Whichever you choose to listen to, you’ll be subjecting yourself to abject horror as we take an appropriately stark look at the Holocaust, replete with Darth Vader gas mask breathing to supplement the death march beat, hellish vocals, and guitars which range from creeping damned rattles and spectral, ear-piercing shrieks. From the stark, long, quotation opening to the sputtering ending where the beat becomes slower and more faint like a life disappearing, it is a harrowing experience. Yes it is angry, overflowing with guilt and rage almost intangibly so, but it is the horror, the desolate, entirely inhuman nature of it all which will stay with you like watching newsreel footage of an extermination camp or seeing the crushed remains of a person still splayed under the wheels of a car.

Misheard Lyrics: The entire intro

2. I’m not afraid

3. Harvey Casey breathes us sir (?)

4. Pot luck trees

5. Dignity girl

6. Never combat

Actual Lyrics: No, I’m not pasting it here

2. Arbeit Macht Frei

3. Hartheim Castle breathes us in

4. Poplar trees

5. Dignity gone

6. Never counted

Of Walking Abortion

‘I knew that someday I was gonna die, and I knew before I died two things would happen to me; that number one I would regret my entire life, and number two I would want to live my life over again‘.

The first song from The Holy Bible to offer an industrial tone, the savage guitars crunch and throb, drums smash down like hammers on steel, all manner of filters make the instruments sound mechanical and condensed while Bradfield sounds like a cyborg spinning out of control. This is heavy, dark stuff, unsurprisingly, with a chaotic mixture of lyrical brilliance with lyrical weirdness. It’s the first song that sounds evil on the album, as if it has taken on a life of its own and is coming after you, stalking, hunting. Opening with the above haunting quote (Hubert Selby Jr) about life, death, and regret, futility, apathy, the lyrics and music follow without looking back. The finger-pointing ending, which I believe was added by Nicky, has become a Manics moment – meme -mement? The band seemingly taking aim at, well, all of us, the monstrous humans we are, being responsible for all of the terrible shit in the world. Again Bradfield pulls every once of hatred and despair from the words, pumps them back through the music and unleashes a terrifying vocal performance, screaming to the pit of his soul with unfettered anguish and rage.

Misheard Lyrics:

1. Obsidian’s blackest hole/a city is blackest hole/a city’s blackest hole
2. The nation’s mouth wraps you inside
3. Fucked up don’t know why you put it away
4. Shut up! Shut up!
5. Open black ground with tomorrow’s compass (?)
6. So watch out girl and you expect your chores/so watch our car and you’ll expect no choice

Actual Lyrics:

1. Acedia’s blackest hole
2. The nation’s moral suicide
3. Fucked up don’t know why you poor little boy
4. Shalom! Shalom!
5. Open black ruins a moral conscience
6. So wash your car in your ‘x’ baseball shoes

Of Walking Abortion: 4/Great

Mausoleum

Generic Ratings: 1: Crap. 2: Okay. 3: Good. 4: Great

Continuing throughout the caustic middle berth of The Holy Bible, this is one of the heaviest and most violent songs, and is certainly the most dense when the lyrics and music are bunched together. The structure isn’t complex, but it definitely appears that way given how breathlessly, impossibly the lyrics are spat out. There’s a creepy, incessant throng of insidious malevolence, the chorus is a guttural expulsion of anguish and disgust, the whole song feels like an exorcism, a cleansing of the blackest oil, but the sudden end suggests that nothing is resolved, nothing is better, and no amount of primal rage will diffuse the malignant vileness brooding inside.

Mausoleum – 4/Great

Misheard Lyrics: 1. Your mother’s tea is rotten/Humanity’s another

2. Answers her cries

3. Life bleeds the signs of all the victims

Actual Lyrics: 1. Humanity’s recovered

2. Answers her crimes

3. Life is so silent for the victims

Archives Of Pain

Generic Ratings: 1. Crap. 2: Ok. 3: Good. 4: Great

A truly brutal, horrific song which causes revulsion and has an atmosphere which any number of metal bands try their entire careers to generate and almost always fail. We know the state of Richey’s mind at this point, but the band’s creative powers were at their peak so the blending of music, lyrics, visuals, and atmosphere all comes together to make something charred and ugly, and yet, absolutely flawless. The guitars are particularly crushing, Bradfield’s vocals are those of a hundred widows, while Wire’s bass line may be the most sinister ever committed to tape. Lyrically it’s as you would expect – in that it’s nothing like you would ever expect, the chorus simply a cascading list of the names of serial killers. It also closes with one of the greatest guitar solos ever recorded.

Misheard Lyrics: 1. Kill Yeltsin, Hussain.

2. Not punish us with champagne.

Actual Lyrics: 1. Kill Yeltsin, who’s saying?

2. Not punish less, rise the pain.

Archives Of Pain: 4/Great

The Holy Bible: An Introduction

Obviously my feeble words and thoughts won’t add anything new to everything which has already been said about this album. For my part it is still my favourite Manics album, possibly my favourite album of the nineties, and undoubtedly one of the greatest albums of all time.  From the cover art to the artwork between the out of sequence lyrics in the book, from the terrifying lyrics themselves to the almost overpowering brutality, pain, and love of the music it is  flawless.  If you want bleak, go for the original British version; if you want somthing with a bit more oomph, go for the re-released American version. Buy the 10th anniversary and get both. A simple glance at the song titles is enough to create unease, and from start to finish it portrays a mind, a human at breaking point, stretched sinuous until there is almost nothing left. Angry, fierce, quietly tender, overflowing with despair, regret, humour, and a final yearning for hope it nevertheless ends on a high for me with PCP; one last fuck you to the world, to the self, and a backs against the wall defiant cry of triumph.

Songs coming soon…