Manic Street Preachers

Ayn Marx · 06-05-2022, 05:04 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SGR

Lifeblood is their most criminally underrated album - underrated by the band too. Such a great cohesive album - their second best after Holy Bible to me.

My only complaint with it is that the mastering is a little wonky. Everything is too damn loud, and JDB's voice is too high in the mix often times - but the songs are wonderful. I know they've been giving some of their albums the reissue/remaster treatment, but given the band's feelings about this one I'm not optimistic it'll get the same treatment for its 20th anniversary (2024) - it's sad too, because this album could really use a remaster to clean up some things.

Yes, the voice mix is way too high and sounds as if JDB was on his own with a mike in and acoustically isolated booth. If that’s the case they’d need to have access to the original ’tapes’ or whatever in order to treat seperate tracks differently. My guess is only a modified mess could come out of it.

SGR · 06-06-2022, 04:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ayn Marx

Yes, the voice mix is way too high and sounds as if JDB was on his own with a mike in and acoustically isolated booth. If that’s the case they’d need to have access to the original ’tapes’ or whatever in order to treat seperate tracks differently. My guess is only a modified mess could come out of it.

I don't know why they wouldn't still have those tapes kicking around somewhere. This album is not that old. If they do, I think they could pull off a decent remaster.

Again though, not sure if the band would even want to give that kind of treatment to this album. I don't have the interview at hand, but I believe all three of them view this album as a mistake, and probably their worst album - it ain't true of course.