Manic Street Preachers tease new material: “So much for the Decline & Fall”

nme.com:

Manic Street Preachers have teased new material with a clip of new music on their social media – check out the snippet and its accompanying visual below.The band captioned the post on Monday (August 26) with the words, “So much for the Decline & Fall’.The 20-second clip features a triumphant, rising guitar riff and frenzied drumming, while the video clip opens with a quote from Welsh poet Dylan Thomas: “The highest hymns of the sun are written in the dark”.The instrumental clip, which stutters with static interruptions, also includes phrases that follow a similar pattern to the caption: “So much for calculations”, “So much for standing tall”, “So much for implications”, before finally concluding with the same words: “So much for the Decline & Fall”.

Watch below.A post shared by Manic Street Preachers (@manics)The band discussed their upcoming 15th album in an interview with Louder Sound in June, which they described at the time as “90 per cent done” and likely to come out in January or February 2025.“It has a lot of energy, even though I don’t feel particularly energised,” said bassist and lyricist Nicky Wire. “One of the songs is like a mixture of The Cardigans and The Skids, who are two of our favourite bands, and another sounds like ‘Come Up And See Me’ [by Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel] played by Dinosaur Jr.”The last Manics album was ‘The Ultra Vivid Lament’ in 2021, their first Number One record in 23 years.

In a four star review, NME wrote: “The record has its flaws – the odd misguided lyric, the occasional slip into by-numbers pop melodies – but there’s plenty of space for those mistakes to be made.