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TheHoly Bible (slight reprise)

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    TheHoly Bible (slight reprise)

    Good, at least we can get rid of the rubbish "Stipe is Gay Shock" part of that thread and get on with the more interesting dissection of "The Holy Bible"

    I am amazed that whoever it was said that "Archives Of Pain" and "The Intense Humming Of Evil" weren't very good (sorry for any misquote, the archive is down) as "Archive of Pain" is to me the quintessential song of THB and the one that springs to mind whenever I think of that album.

    "The Intense Humming..", on the other hand, is the song that stops it being the perfect albim and is the only one I haven't put on my I-pod. That is the one song that I think "Alright, we get it already" about and, musically, is no great shakes.

    I don't want to get into "You are in a pit of wrongness" silliness here but I would be genuinely interested to hear what SR thinks of "Intense" as every Manics fan, indeed every "Holy Bible" fan I have asked appears to really dislike "Intense.."

    #2
    TheHoly Bible (slight reprise)

    I agree. Intense Humming is a major skipper.

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      #3
      TheHoly Bible (slight reprise)

      Well, it's certainly not a skip-to (ma lou). You'd never actively reach for it.

      But in the context of the album, if you're sitting down for the full Holy Bible experience, it's absolutely definitive. It's perhaps the darkest spell of an already none-blacker album, made bearable by the knowledge that you've got the exhilarating adrenalin rush of "PCP" coming up straight afterwards.

      The Manics themselves always found the full six minutes of it a hard slog. "Good old 'Intense Humming Of Evil'", they'd say with weary laughs. Which is borne out by the fact that they've hardly ever played it live. In fact, I think I'm right in saying that they played it just the once in 1994, in somewhere like Portugal. (And a couple of times more recently on their trawling-the-back-catalogue tours.)

      There's some arresting imagery in the lyric...

      Arbeit macht frei
      Transports of invalids
      Hartheim Castle breathes us in
      In block 5 we worship malaria
      Lagerstrasse, poplar trees
      Beauty lost, dignity gone
      Rascher surveys us butcher bacteria
      Welcome welcome soldier smiling
      ..but the pay-off is absolutely stunning in the way it wrong-foots you. Just when you're expecting them to hammer home what a tragedy it is that so many promising young lives were cut short by the Holocaust, they hit you with...

      6 million screaming souls
      Maybe misery - maybe nothing at all
      Lives that wouldn't have changed a thing
      Never counted - never mattered - never be
      Drink it away, every tear is false
      Churchill no different
      Wished the workers bled to a machine

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        #4
        TheHoly Bible (slight reprise)

        I agree it's a stunning piece of work. But I haven't got time to listen to grinding, six-minute Holocaust songs. I'm a busy executive.

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          #5
          TheHoly Bible (slight reprise)

          Afternoon all. I've just managed to sort out my registration. Back as soon as I can to get stuck into this.

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            #6
            TheHoly Bible (slight reprise)

            I like the idea of a Holy Bible reprise. Perhaps an a capella version of Faster.

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              #7
              TheHoly Bible (slight reprise)

              If it's going to properly bookend the album it would have to be "Actually, on second thoughts, no".

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                #8
                TheHoly Bible (slight reprise)

                I'm fairly sure they played TIHOE on quite a lot of the Holy Bible tour. I remember the hardcore at the front of a gig in Portsmouth trying to outdo each other singing along to it, the Britpop kids looking a bit nervous, and personally being glad of chance for a breather after a PCP/Faster/Revol opening. There's a live version of it on the Holy Bible Special Edition CD.

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