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Apr 11, 2018While there are a couple of misfires (Broken Algorithms is as messy as its title would suggest), this is generally a fine return to form from one of the country’s most treasured bands.
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Apr 9, 2018‘Broken Algorithms’ is a sizeable misfire from its title onwards, thundering about with the ham-fisted bluster of much of their debut, ‘Generation Terrorists’. Its digital focus is at odds with an album besotted with faded analogue beauty.
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Apr 9, 2018The sheer scale, pop-pomp and balls on show here render their survival an absolute victory. Resistance may be futile, but the Manics continue to advance.
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Apr 4, 2018No song sounds over-rehearsed, and plenty sound like they were laid down on the first take.
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MojoMar 29, 2018Beneath the surface sheen, Resistance Is Futile is a complex, multi-layer work. [May 2018, p.88]
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Q MagazineMar 29, 2018They sound revitalised by the radiance of these songs, liberated from the heavy burden of being the Manic Street Preachers. [May 2018, p.102]
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Apr 13, 2018Resistance Is Futile, the band’s thirteenth studio album, distills the Manics’ pomp and melancholy into buoyant pop songs with biting electric guitars, sugary synths, and majestic strings.
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Apr 13, 2018The album concludes with Nicky Wire’s grainy lead vocal on The Left Behind, a charmingly offbeat detour into 1980s indie-rock. More of these eccentric tonal variations would have been welcome on an album that emerges as a solid exercise in arena-sized anthemics, majestic in parts but not a career peak.
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Apr 13, 2018This seamless blend of aesthetics is also why Resistance Is Futile works musically. First, it comes on strong-all sharp edges and gleam-but once the blare fades, the melodies and their accompanying sweetness lingers, leaving a lasting impression behind.
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Apr 12, 2018This is not the Manics’ best album, but it is one of their most charming. As a document of where they stand it is endlessly fascinating.
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Apr 4, 2018Mild as feelings may be about this new record it certainly doesn't depose them from their spot as one of Britain's most vital and beloved bands. [Mar-May 2018, p.56]
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Apr 16, 2018With 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.
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Apr 16, 2018A remarkable band, still wrestling with the most difficult issues, still searching for beauty in the void.
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Apr 13, 2018These 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.
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Apr 12, 2018Overall 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.
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Apr 6, 2018Even 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.
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Apr 2, 2018The 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.
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UncutMar 29, 2018Effective, if not quite thrilling. [May 2018, p.30]
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Mar 29, 2018Occasional 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
User score distribution:
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Positive: 8 out of 16
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Mixed: 6 out of 16
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Negative: 2 out of 16
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Jun 5, 2018