Their 2004 record Lifeblood changed everything for Manic Street Preachers, a diversion away from the anthemic bombast that had made them huge and into something more detached and considered. The Manics were never going to be a band who went through the motions to keep sales ticking over – even at their biggest, they released a song called South Yorkshire Mass Murderer, after all – but the epic folly that became Lifeblood ended an era for them, giving way to a period of contemplation over where to go next. A 20th anniversary reissue was announced this week and, far away from chart statistics and with two decades’ hindsight to call upon, Lifeblood now looks like one of the most pivotal releases of their career.
In 2021, singer and guitarist James Dean Bradfield told this writer how the way they approached making the record was a big departure from anything they’d done before. “It was the first time we'd ever really tried to not believe our instincts, to not believe our first ideas,” said Bradfield. “If we did a demo then we would go the opposite way and try and do it another way. If we wrote a song in a style, we'd say, ‘Okay, we got the song but let’s try and do it in a different style. Basically, we were switching off our autopilot and just trying to be a different version of ourselves.”
