The quiet bits sound loud and the loud bits also sound loud, leading to what audiophiles refer to as ‘brickwalling’. The album displayed a variety of styles; "Roses in the Hospital" tapped into a "stadium funk-rock" style, [12] while "From Despair to Where" incorporated a quiet-loud dynamic; "follow[ing] the grunge template" in the words of Rob Jovanocic.

As well as gearing up for a summer of stadium shows supporting The Killers and Green Day throughout the UK and Europe, the Manics are currently at work on the follow-up to 2018’s acclaimed ‘Resistance Is Futile‘. The third single, " Roses in the Hospital", peaked at number 15 on the UK Singles Chart, the highest-charting single from the band's first three albums. In his review for Vox, Keith Cameron remarked that the album showed Manic Street Preachers "skating gingerly over that treacherous Difficult Second Album ice". It felt like we were gorging on a lot of American rock in particular, whereas [seminal 1994 album] ‘The Holy Bible’ was all our British influences and new wave. For some reason, the demos are labelled as ‘remastered’ which makes no sense, since these are previously unreleased.The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products.

After the beauty of this, 'Drug Drug Druggy' seems distinctly underwhelming and average, though 'Roses in the Hospital' more than makes up for this, being the most iconic-sounding song on the album and an MSP classic.Nostalgic Pushead' interestingly also contains the sound of Sean Moore dropping a snooker ball into a frying pan, such was the freedom to explore whatever musical indulgence they desired.

We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. Indeed, the Manics did spend a fortune on recording this album, to a ridiculous extent, and this is certainly clear from the production values. In summary, while boxes have certainly been ticked, and it appears to do what it should, the band seem to have treated Gold Against the Soul rather poorly with this reissue.

This is all the more disappointing because the Manics are normally pretty good at offering decent value packages when it comes to reissues. Can't relate to the earlier reviews at all, this remaster sounds great on my system, low end is lovely, I can feel the bass, just how I like it. The album has often divided opinion among fans and critics due to its decadent glam-rock sound and approach. Nostalgic Pushead' is yet more evidence of high budget, yet for all that, it seems to lack soul, and much of this album does not replicate the same Joie De Vivre as GT, but this zeal would soon be found again on their next album. At five and a half minutes it is the longest song on the album, but pans out impressively, with spiky guitars, prominent drums, and the lyric "Rock and Roll has a conscience", presumably as a reference to their own body of work.