Manic Street Preachers
The Holy Bible (Epic)

The second-most-interesting thing about this hard-rocking Welsh trio-plus is that they are huge in most places around the globe, except the United States, where they have never had much of an impact. The reasons for this lack of stateside success are hard to pin down – public relations campaigns have been particularly successful on U.S. soil. It's a matter of record that the U.S. consumer would consume shit on a plate if Arnold Schwarzenegger said it was bockwurst. Yet MSP's This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours, released in Europe in 1998, went multiplatinum before Virgin signed the band and released it here a year later.

The market anomaly is curious, but it pales when compared to the 1995 disappearance of Richey James, the band's vocalist and most controversial member. James, whose mental health had been deteriorating for several years, apparently left his house one day, without his credit cards or passport, and was never seen again. His car was found a few days later at a spot with a reputation somewhat like the Golden Gate Bridge's on the matter of suicide. Nevertheless, his body was never found, and as one might expect, rumors abound.

Stripped of a crucial member, the Manic Street Preachers decided to carry on as a trio – and it could be said that not everyone expected their next album, 1996's Everything Must Go (Epic), to go platinum, or that it would turn the band into superstars.

Dead or alive, James was essential to The Holy Bible – a bleak, bitter, exquisitely articulate triumph. The songs – I'm particularly under the spell of "She Is Suffering," "4st 7lb," and "IfwhiteAmericatoldthetruthforonedayit'sworldwouldfallapart" (not to mention the rest of the album) – are lifted by hard-edged, melodic guitar-driven rock as brittle and concise as the lyrics they bear. All of the Manic Street Preachers' albums are, at the very least, solid. But The Holy Bible (I love blasphemy) is one of a kind – a simply brilliant statement and, yes, probably too much for a U.S. audience. (J.H. Tompkins)