Gold Against The Soul

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Joe Tangari of Pitchfork, however, lambasted Gold Against the Soul as a "labored, sophomore-slumping hard rock turd that had them looking washed up early", concluding that "there was really no preparation for the intensity, perversion and genuine darkness of The Holy Bible" which would follow in 1994. This has really brought back a lot of memories of the four of us being in the studio and playing snooker endlessly. At least they learned from the mistake - the Know Your Enemy reissue was vastly superior to this in terms of value, content and sound.

However, with the band's more beefed up, arena-friendly sound emerging in subsequent years, this album is no longer so at odds with the general Manics aesthetic.I remember our manager at the time Philip Hall saying that he could imagine Freddie Mercury singing ‘La Tristesse Durera’. The 2011 compilation National Treasures – The Complete Singles includes a remastered version of the Gold Against The Soul singles and I had a listen to ‘From Despair To Where’ and it’s far less harsh than on this new album reissue. Yourself' and 'Symphony Of Tourette' have the same grungey feel as 'Sleepflower', the first being a self-loathing diatribe and the latter being a foul-mouthed, violent outburst surrounded by heavy, disjointed guitars and frenetic drums. The band privileged long guitar riffs and the drums feel more present and loud in the final mix of the album.

For the deluxe reissue coming in June, Wire promised that fans would enjoy a deep-dive into the treasure trove of B-sides and never-heard-before demos. Gold Against the Soul takes to an extreme the hard rock sound of its predecessor and saw the band experiment with styles including funk and the then-contemporary grunge. Vocals and cymbals sound great, so there's that to enjoy, and unlike Hagstrom, I didn't notice any unwanted distortion anywhere. 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. s ’10 Year Collector’s Edition’ of Send Away The Tigers abandoned the box format and was actually consistent with the deluxe editions of the new albums and then in 2018 the This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours 20th anniversary collector’s edition was different yet again.Gold Against the Soul was given a deluxe re-issue in 2020 with each track remastered, complete with a 120-page A4 book of photos taken by Mitch Ikeda and scans of original lyric sheets plus previously unreleased demos.

also contains one of JDB's most memorable vocals, as he executes a powerful and raw performance, full of force and anger. When I found that demo and played it to James, he was shocked as well at how it fitted in with our later post-punk ideas. 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. The band stated that the choice to work with Dave Eringa again was important for this album: "We finished work in November and then just went straight into a demo studio and we came out about four weeks later with the album all finished. Indeed, the Manics did spend a fortune on recording this album, to a ridiculous extent, and this is certainly clear from the production values.

The remastering is credited to frontman James Dean Bradfield and Matt Colton, from Metropolis Studios. The reissue ends with more remixes of ‘Roses in the Hospital’ then anyone really needs but omits the seven-inch version of that same single. This is all the more disappointing because the Manics are normally pretty good at offering decent value packages when it comes to reissues.