Manic Street Preachers - Know Your Enemy
|
List Price: Our Price: $6.25 You Save: $11.73 (65%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $0.01 (click here) Category: Music CD See more new music releases 
|
|---|
Buy this Music CD at online store in your country
Canadian Music Store
Canadian Music Store
Free Music Notes for Know Your Enemy
Free Music Review: Manics all over the place
Hit: 3 Stars
I've always found the Manic's mixture of musicality and morals amusing and never more so than on this album. I'm sure the commercial success of 'This is my truth' frightened them back to their roots. I imagine them tipping all their record collections out on the carpet and choosing 15 at random and writing a song about them, hence the wildly conflicting styles. I'm ok with tracks 1-4, don't like the Beach boys much and had to turn Miss Europa off in the car as my children were complaining about the lyrics! Love 6, 10, 12 and onwards. As many people have already pointed out, this album deserves a lot of listening to. It took me about 15 run throughs before it really came through to me. Enjoy!Free Music Review: Manics all over the place
Hit: 3 Stars
I've always found the Manic's mixture of musicality and morals amusing and never more so than on this album. I'm sure the commercial success of 'This is my truth' frightened them back to their roots. I imagine them tipping all their record collections out on the carpet and choosing 15 at random and writing a song about them, hence the wildly conflicting styles. I'm ok with tracks 1-4, don't like the Beach boys much and had to turn Miss Europa off in the car as my children were complaining about the lyrics! Love 6, 10, 12 and onwards. As many people have already pointed out, this album deserves a lot of listening to. It took me about 15 run throughs before it really came through to me. Enjoy!Free Music Review: Know Your Enemy
Hit: 3 Stars
Know Your Enemy is a an album that mixes all kinds of genres and the end result is that one ends up listening to a very strange album. Some songs sound like it could be inspired by the Beach Boys, whilst others sound like the rough rock music from their formative days as a group. We also get a disco song on this very eclective album. The song "Let Robeson Sing" is a shameless propaganda song that sounds like a failed highschool project with trite lyrics. I agree with Allmusic but I think 3 stars is a more fair assessment then to give it 2 stars. All the lyrics are included and we do get a list of whom plays what on the album. 3/5.Free Music Review: Just doesn't work....
Hit: 2 Stars
Most bands make an album like `Know Your Enemy' at this point in their career.
The pattern goes like this:
1) Band with an experimental or aggressive sound explodes on the scene and gains a diehard cult following.
2) Over time, the band gradually sands down its harsher edges in favour of a more accessible approach, earning them commercial success but also accusations of "selling out", so...
3) They decide to strike back with a fierce, uncommercial album to show their old fans that they've still got it, but.....
4) They're older and more professional now, so they don't just want to blatantly re-hash their former sound. And it would be such a pity to let that hard-earned pop success go to waste, wouldn't it...?
So the band make a bits-and-pieces album; one that contains enough of the old-school sound to please their diehard fans, but also explores some new ideas to prove they're still trailblazers, all while keeping one eye on the pop charts.
`Know Your Enemy' is exactly this type of album. It's a deliberate attempt by the Manics to cover all bases at once. They try fierce rockers (`Found That Soul', `Dead Martyrs'), pop (`Ocean Spray', `Year Of Purification'), ham-fisted satire (`Miss Europa..'), Brian Wilson homages (`So Why So Sad'). There are some good songs here, and the Manics demonstrate that they can both rock hard and craft lush pop. But the problem is the album has no flow, because the different styles don't fit that well together. The quality of the songs is also very inconsistent, and given the length of the album there's no excuse for not trimming it down to 10 or 12 really strong songs
The more fundamental problem with `Know Your Enemy' is that a return to the political posturing of `Generation Terrorists' feels like a big step backwards after the lyrical progression of their previous albums. Despite a decade having passed since their debut, the Manics' political outlook hasn't really changed or matured. They still sound like a bunch of undergraduates who've read way too much Chomsky; rallying about the "evils" of the West (especially America) while simultaneously kissing up to Cuba (`Baby Elian') and China (`Freedom Of Speech..'). As the firebrands of `Generation Terrorists', with youth and righteous anger on their side, this was powerful stuff, but it sounds very awkward and forced compared to the more subtle personal reflections of `Everything Must Go' and `This Is My Truth'.
In all, I think `Know Your Enemy' just doesn't work. In trying to please everyone, the Manics end up pleasing no-one. Some good individual songs, but the album is too scattershot to be called a success.
2.5 stars
Free Music Review: Just Another Monday Manics
Hit: 2 Stars
After years of promising to fulfill their potential, Welsh rockers, the Manics finally came through with a great album, 1998's "This is My Truth Tell Me Yours." Full of instantly memorable melodies, searing guitar, and breathless, anthemic singing, it left their crash-and-burn, agitprop punk well and truly behind them. The Manics, however, must have realized that this was a hard act to follow. Part of the promotion for the new album has involved slagging off their former masterpiece, while the new album's title, "Know Your Enemy," is supposed to refer to the enemy within. A pity, because the only way to fight against making a brilliant record is to make a dodgy one.
Luckily the Manics haven't gone this far. "Know Your Enemy" has some great tracks. "Found That Soul" is a rumbling rocker and "So Why So Sad" is a beautiful Beach Boys pastiche. One of the best developments, however, is singer/guitarist, James Dean Bradfield's first lyrical effort, "Ocean Spray." Apart from being a pleasant enough song, it offers hope that the band's clunky Marxist lyrics, supplied by lanky bassist Nicky Wire, will improve in the future. Some of Wire's more obvious political lyrics, such as "Baby Elian," commenting on the Cuban child who became a political pawn last year, sound like the outpourings of a commissar committee. This also explains the band's recent gimmick of promoting the record by playing a Castro-sanctioned concert in Havana. This is a good record, but if you want a much better one, buy their previous album.