Resistance Is Futile
by Manic Street Preachers
  • Record Label: Columbia
  • Release Date: Apr 13, 2018
Metascore
73

Generally favorable reviews - based on 19 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 11 out of 19
  2. Mixed: 8 out of 19
  3. Negative: 0 out of 19
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  1. Sputnikmusic
    Apr 16, 2018
    60
    With Resistance is Futile, they’ve finally caught up with their own reality and decided to produce the one album they never made; a serviceable rock album.
  2. The Observer (UK)
    Apr 16, 2018
    60
    A remarkable band, still wrestling with the most difficult issues, still searching for beauty in the void.
  3. The Guardian
    Apr 13, 2018
    60
    These songs, in which the rough-edged art-punk core of the Manics’ earliest days needles through mature, accomplished lushness, are heavy with a sense of the passing of all things and an uncertainty about their place in the world.
  5. The Line of Best Fit
    Apr 12, 2018
    60
    Overall Resistance is Futile is an interesting nexus of the Manics’ twin ambitions towards populism and complexity--and an encouraging sign that they are still progressing after over 30 years.
  6. DIY Magazine
    Apr 6, 2018
    60
    Even though the likes of ‘Dylan And Caitlin’ (a duet with The Anchoress on Dylan Thomas and wife Caitlin Macnamara’s tempestuous marriage) or the poignant nostalgia of ‘In Eternity’--seemingly a sentimental ode to former bandmate Richey Edwards--are thematically complex, they’re coated in unabashedly big hooks. It’s a classic Manics trick and one that still works; across 12 tracks though, you do start to crave the spray-painted antagonists of old to pop up every now and then.
  7. The Skinny
    Apr 2, 2018
    60
    The tunes are massive and buried in strings, synths and stacked harmonies, but the subtlety of the lyrics is lost in tunes like the Gary Numan-esque In Eternity and Broken Algorithms' Appetite for Destruction obsession. It's left to album closer The Left Behind to offer a signpost to where the Manics could go next.
  8. Uncut
    Mar 29, 2018
    60
    Effective, if not quite thrilling. [May 2018, p.30]
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  9. Record Collector
    Mar 29, 2018
    60
    Occasional MOR slumps aside, most of Resistance comes sharpened by the Manics’ innate extremes of intelligence and instinct, populist extroversion and prickly introspection, melody and over-stretched meter.

Awards & Rankings

42
#42 Most Shared Album of 2018

User Reviews

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User Score
6.4

Generally favorable reviews- based on 16 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 8 out of 16
  2. Mixed: 6 out of 16
  3. Negative: 2 out of 16
  1. Doof
    Jun 5, 2018
    0
    Good grief, if you found an album like 'Everything Must Go' a tad too MOR after reaching it via either 'The Holy Bible' or 'GenerationGood grief, if you found an album like 'Everything Must Go' a tad too MOR after reaching it via either 'The Holy Bible' or 'Generation Terrorists' then boy oh boy what would you make coming straight to this. Bland, formulaic, tired, over familiar, soppy, weak...you get the idea. Not one great tune on the thing, as sad as that fact is to report.… Full Review »
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