Review: Manic Street Preachers, The Apollo, 2007

Original article;

http://www.bbc.co.uk/manchester/content/articles/2007/05/30/270507_manics_feature.shtml

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Manic Street Preachers at the Apollo Colin Warhurst (gig: 27/05/07) Say what you will about Manic Street Preachers (and people often do) but they’re a band who still continue to split opinion right down the middle.
Personally, I am firmly on the pro-Manics side of the fence, if for no other reason than their longevity and ability to still produce great guitar music, as new track Your Love Alone Is Not Enough goes to show. Not that they forget where they come from. Their set covered plenty of their greatest hits, mixed up tracks from Send Away The Tigers, and threw in some surprises from their vast back catalogue. And they played them loud. The whole set was dominated by a wall of sound, thundering drums and superb guitar solos. James Dean Bradfield’s epic voice was barely restrained by the walls, as the Manics took no prisoners with a ridiculously frenetic pace from the get-go. True, the set did slow down in the middle for an acoustic interlude from Bradfield, including a touching tribute to former band member Richie Edwards, but soon enough, the rest of the band returned and the frontman led the charge back into their hurtling set, issuing ear-ringing versions of classic tracks such as Motorcycle Emptiness and Everything Must Go, and capping it all with an awe-inspiring A Design For Life as a finale. It was a performance so strong that they killed of my Bank Holiday weekend a whole day early. Monday wasn’t spent in the pub; I was at home practising some classic Manic riffs on my guitar.