Gold Against The Soul

Product Information

It’s an apocalyptic vision of Britain from the Thatcher years to the ‘caring Nineties’… The media thinks that if you’re working class, you’ve got to be one of two stereotypes – either tipping your cap to your employer, or a drug fiend permanently bombed out your skull. The B-sides are appended to the album on CD 1, whilst CD 2 offers the usual array of demos which are always interesting and impressively well developed. I was therefore keenly anticipating the follow-up and didn’t have to wait very long as the Dave Eringa-produced Gold Against The Soul arrived about 18 months after the first album and delivered three great singles in ‘From Despair To Where’, ‘La Tristesse Durera (Scream to a Sigh)’ and ‘Roses in the Hospital’ (as well as the ‘Life Becoming A Landslide’ EP). You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice.

Regarding the album's influences, bassist Nicky Wire remarked that Gold Against the Soul was "all Alice in Chains and Red Hot Chili Peppers", and that he was emulating Flea at the time. The last five long-players (since 2009’s Journal For Plague Lovers) have all come as near identical, shelf-friendly, compact hardcover book deluxe editions, normally offering at least a bonus CD of demos. I thought we’d got past the worst of that, but Gold Against The Soul 2020 is a great example of the concept in action.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. All lyrics are written by Richey Edwards and Nicky Wire; all music is composed by James Dean Bradfield and Sean Moore No. The B-side ‘Comfort Comes’ is definitely the bridge to ‘The Holy Bible’, but interestingly the demo of the title track of ‘Gold Against The Soul’ is very ‘The Holy Bible’,” said Wire. An enjoyable listen and an improvement over the CD that I've been playing for the best part of 30 years. James [Dean Bradfield, frontman], Sean [Moore, drummer] and I aren’t the greatest fans of it, but our fans have a peculiar attachment to it.

The remastering is credited to frontman James Dean Bradfield and Matt Colton, from Metropolis Studios. In Spin, Simon Reynolds opined that the band "motor-mouth a fine manifesto, but haven't got a musical bone between them". The vinyl reissue has been remastered which, while it is something nobody would actually ask for, has in this case been a very minor job. If you think I’m nit-picking about packaging, there’s no defending treating the actual music this way. Had this on cd for many years and decided to get the vinyl eventually as I recently did with the Holy Bible.He highlighted the "confused-nihilist persona internalised and fucked up to the point of collapse, while the riffs just keep on playing. In his review for Vox, Keith Cameron remarked that the album showed Manic Street Preachers "skating gingerly over that treacherous Difficult Second Album ice".