Manic Street Preachers
Cardiff University
11th May, 2007

View: standing, mid-crowd

While solid press has suggested the Manics’ latest long-player has regained a little of the faith lost after This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours, the band have always remained a daunting live prospect. An acidic early catalogue has remained unflinching and the vitriolic glee in playing them remains. Milking home-crowd sentiments, the group opened with You Love Us in defiantly knowing fashion. Even the later, chart-friendly material was delivered with hard-edged ferocity, although the chart-topping Your Love Alone Is Not Enough and doleful I’m Just A Patsy divided the audience. If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next, however, was sung with vigour by a now-adoring crowd, while A Design For Life offered James Dean Bradfield’s shredded vocal chords a much-deserved rest. Motorcycle Emptiness lacked the expected swagger, but Die In The Summertime and La Tristessa Durera had him hitting a bloodcurdling scream – the perfect summation for a band whose selfbelief has never wavered and whose self-gratification wasn’t theirs alone.

Reviewed by Darren Howells
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