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(*trigger warning: mentions of self-harm, disordered eating)
(all biographical information from Wikipedia)
February 1st marked the thirty-year anniversary of Welsh guitarist and lyricist Richey Edwards’ disappearance. The circumstances surrounding his case are manifold and unclear. Several claim to have spotted him in remote locations around the globe since, but these reports are unconfirmed. As of November 2008, he is presumed dead.
The Holy Bible, the third album by Edwards’ band Manic Street Preachers, was released about five months before he vanished. It was deeply important to me when I was very young (around middle school), and lately, I’ve been going back to it. I’m here today to talk about this horrific, cathartic, bleak, and devastating record, because I have honestly never heard anything like it.
It’s a little difficult to put a finger on what exactly makes the album so singular. Sonically, The Holy Bible is not a whole lot different from American hard rock of the time, except that it draws more from the gothic textures of bands like Joy Division and Wire. Nothing about it is experimental or strange, but as much as it might sound like something else, it doesn’t feel like anything else.
Richey Edwards was a deeply troubled person. During the period in which The Holy Bible was written and recorded, he is reported to have been suffering from alcoholism, an eating disorder, and self-harm, as well as the depression that plagued him throughout his adult life. His public appearances were sometimes frightening and confrontational; in one case, he is reported to have responded to an NME interview question by carving an answer into his forearm. Shortly before the album’s release, he spent time in a mental hospital. By the time the band was promoting the record, Edwards had grown quieter and concerningly thin.
Every piece of The Holy Bible is informed by Edwards’ suffering. The lyrics he contributed, around which the music was written, are crawling with worms. They are troubling, confrontational, and at times sincerely, sensually beautiful free verse poems. Their style is loose and disorganized, forcing singer James Bradfield to slur words together and muddle pronunciations to lend them a veneer of musicality.
“Yes”, the opening track, is a stunner. Through the life of a sex worker, it explores the question of whether consumerism’s exaltation of personal choice might lead us to view others as objects for our enjoyment, ready-made and customizable. The chorus displays Richey Edwards’ ability to say what he wanted to in the most viscerally upsetting way possible.
The vicious new-wave single “She is Suffering” is one of the album’s slower and more traditional moments, but it is still beautiful and strange. Sometimes, when you listen to these songs, you wonder who the speaker identifies with; the lyrics are scornful and brutal towards all, but they’re too emotionally vulnerable not to come from a place of empathy. I think maybe, when Richey Edwards tells a story, he’s been everybody he’s writing about. These lyrics understand suffering from all sides, as well as the horrible, muddled mess it amounts to en masse.
Throughout this whole album, there runs an undercurrent of darkness that can be genuinely terrifying. It’s not quite obvious at first, but there’s a weird effect; when the music stops in between songs, it feels like everything goes pitch black, and you realize the dark’s been lying there beneath everything the whole time. “This is Yesterday” almost sounds hopeful until you pay close attention to the lyrics. These are the words of a person in deep, crushing pain. They are so close to the skin, so direct, that it’s really hard to listen to at times.
Nothing on the record is more brutal or more beautiful than “4st 7lb”. I won’t get too specific about the content of this song because it’s deeply upsetting. It’s kind of hard to talk about anyway. But there is something so powerful about the way Richey Edwards writes, talking about his own struggle through the eyes of somebody else. It’s unflinching and yet unwilling to fall into humorlessness and self-pity. The end result just feels so real that you want to look away. But, if you're somebody who’s struggled with some of this stuff before, you know exactly what you’re looking away from.
Listening to this album and thinking about how important it was to me a long time ago has kind of a confusing effect on me. In a way, I get nostalgic, but it’s also a kind of awful reminder of how bad things got at one point. This album is beautiful, but I don’t relate to it all that much anymore, and that’s something to be grateful for.
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