Manic Street Preachers

Blackwood, and a plan that did not survive contact

The band formed in 1986 in Blackwood, Caerphilly, out of a school friendship between James Dean Bradfield, his cousin Sean Moore and Nicky Wire. Richey Edwards joined in 1989 as second guitarist and co-lyricist, a role in which the guitar mattered less than the words and the press-baiting. Their founding idea — one double album, sixteen million copies, then split — was a stated position rather than a strategy, and nothing about the next four decades resembled it.

Generation Terrorists arrived in 1992 and reached number 13 in the UK. Gold Against the Soul followed in 1993 and went to number 8. Both records sat awkwardly between the glam-punk pose and the stadium rock ambition, and neither settled the argument about what the band actually were. The third attempt settled it by abandoning the question entirely.

The Holy Bible, and the gap afterwards

The Holy Bible, released in 1994, sold modestly on arrival and has outlasted almost everything released alongside it. Thirteen songs on anorexia, political execution, consumer self-disgust and the Holocaust, recorded in Cardiff on a tight budget, with Edwards writing the bulk of the lyrics while his own health collapsed. It is the record that every subsequent phase of the band has been measured against, usually to the detriment of the newer work.

Edwards disappeared on 1 February 1995 and was legally presumed dead in 2008. The three remaining members continued, which at the time was not obviously the likely outcome. Everything Must Go in 1996 reached number 2 and turned them into a mainstream British rock act; This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours went to number 1 in 1998 and produced their biggest single. They have four BRIT Awards and were shortlisted for the Mercury Prize in 1996 and 1999. The Ultra Vivid Lament returned them to number 1 in 2021.

Critical Thinking, and growing old in public

Critical Thinking, their fifteenth studio album, came out on 14 February 2025 through Columbia. It was produced by Dave Eringa and Loz Williams and recorded in Wales, at Door to the River in Newport and Rockfield in Monmouth. Four singles preceded it: 'Decline and Fall' on 29 August 2024, 'Hiding in Plain Sight' on 25 October 2024, 'People Ruin Paintings' on 10 January 2025 and 'Brushstrokes of Reunion' on 31 January 2025. The album reached number 2 in the UK and number 1 in Scotland, and holds a Metacritic average of 82 from thirteen reviews.

Wire described it as a record of opposites colliding, of dialectics trying to find a path of resolution, and said that politics had become more a matter of mood and gesture than of policy. The Observer's verdict was that in the 1990s anyone would have bet good money against the band growing older this gracefully — a line that has followed the album around, partly because it concedes how low the expectations were.

Wire's own solo catalogue got a small reissue nudge in 2026: Intimism, self-released digitally on 3 July 2023, received a limited vinyl pressing for Record Store Day on 18 April 2026.

The Roundhouse tapes, released at last

In 2014, for the twentieth anniversary of The Holy Bible, the band played the album in full in sequence for the first time, including three sold-out nights at the Roundhouse in Camden in December. Those nights were recorded and then sat unreleased for over a decade.

The Holy Bible Live was announced in September 2026 and comes out on 23 October 2026 through Sony, as a double 12-inch and a three-CD deluxe edition, with blue marble vinyl and a CD-plus-Blu-ray configuration. It carries all thirteen songs from the live performance, Kieran Evans' concert film Be Pure, Be Vigilant, Behave — shot across all three Roundhouse nights — and a new Steven Wilson mix of the 1994 studio album, made in spring 2026 from the original master tapes.

Bradfield's explanation of why the 2014 shows happened at all was that he wanted to prove they were still a band tough enough to play The Holy Bible; he has said he got through the first show on steroids after losing his voice to flu. Wire framed the reissue as a long-delayed permission, saying the record took a long time to reach a point where the band felt able to reinvestigate the songs after years of simply letting them be.

Autumn 2026: Dublin, then arenas with Suede

The current run is built around the live album. Two headline shows at Dublin's 3Olympia Theatre on 21 and 22 October 2026 are both sold out, billed as standalone dates and explicitly not part of the UK tour that follows.

That tour, announced in late April 2026 with general sale on 1 May, is a nine-date co-headline arena run with Suede — the second time the two bands have shared a bill at this scale. It opens at Glasgow's OVO Hydro on 28 October, then Leeds First Direct Arena on 30 October, Co-op Live in Manchester on 31 October, two nights at Cardiff's Utilita Arena on 3 and 4 November, the O2 in London on 6 November, Birmingham's Utilita Arena on 7 November, Nottingham's Motorpoint Arena on 11 November and Bournemouth International Centre on 12 November.

The year's other notable date was 26 March 2026 at the Royal Albert Hall, the 150th concert in the Teenage Cancer Trust series, during a week curated by Robert Smith. The band opened with 'Motorcycle Emptiness' under a projection of Edwards alongside the current three, played between 23 and 24 songs, and brought out 'Futurology' and 'Roses in the Hospital' for the first time in more than a decade, plus 'Condemned to Rock'n'Roll' for only the second time live. 'A Design for Life' was dedicated to producer Mike Hedges, who was in the hall. Bradfield apologised for a bout of flu taking the top off his range. Wire's summary from the stage: they are 57, and this is not easy.