Manic Street Preachers Manic Street Preachers Manic Street Preachers are a Welsh rock band, formed in 1986 in Blackwood, Caerphilly and consisting of cousins James Dean Bradfield (lead vocals, lead guitar), and Sean Moore (drums, percussion, soundscapes), plus Nicky Wire (bass guitar, lyrics). They are often colloquially known as The Manics. Following the release of their first single, "Suicide Alley", the band was joined by Richey Edwards as co-lyricist and rhythm guitarist. The band's early albums were in a punk vein, eventually broadening to a greater alternative rock sound, whilst retaining a leftist politicisation. Their early combination of androgynous glam imagery and lyrics
Everything Must Go (Manic Street Preachers album) a hummable ditty." "Vox" magazine's Mark Sutherland saw "Everything Must Go" as the group's "most approachable" album, describing it as a "record so superb it might just make intelligence fashionable again", and surmising that the album "proves that, professionally, at least, the Manic Street Preachers don't miss Richey." "Rolling Stone" critic David Fricke called "Everything Must Go" the "most underrated album of the year", describing it as "a record of painstaking melodic craft and thundering execution, a proclamation of physical and emotional cleansing – up to a point." In a retrospective review, Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic wrote: "Above all,