Manic Street Preachers have today (July 22) unveiled details of an anniversary release of ‘Know Your Enemy’.
The expanded and remastered version of ‘Know Your Enemy’ will be released on September 9 and can be pre-ordered here.
The album will be divided into two albums across two disks, ‘Solidarity’ and ‘Door To The River’. The three CD format of the release, also includes a disc of unreleased demos.
The album is described as a “radically reimagined” version of their sixth record and has been entirely remixed and reconstructed to form two separate albums as the band originally planned.
‘Know Your Enemy’ will be available digitally and as a 3CD boxset, double CD and double album.
This deluxe release includes two previously unheard ‘forgotten’ tracks: ‘Studies in Paralysis’ and ‘Rosebud’. You can stream ‘Rosebud’ now – check out its new video below:
the Manics release an expanded and remastered version of ‘Know Your Enemy’ on 9th Sep 2022.
Divided into 2 albums across 2 discs; ‘Solidarity’ & ‘Door To The River’. The 3CD format includes a disc of unreleased demos.
Pre-order and stream ‘Rosebud’ now: https://t.co/M4VoZxseRn pic.twitter.com/cKraTzYBqE
— Manic Street Preachers (@Manics) July 22, 2022
A statement about the release explained: “During the recording sessions [for the original album], the trio got cold feet and settled on a single album that forced often conflicting ideas to sit side by side on the same record.”
It went on: “Whilst going through the band’s archive to put together an anniversary version of ‘Know Your Enemy’, Nicky Wire found the original tapes of ‘Solidarity’ and ‘Door To The River’ that he’d made up in the studio during recording. When he put forward the idea of recreating those records, James Dean Bradfield agreed on the condition that he could remix the entire record with the band’s longtime studio partner Dave Eringa.
“The new mixes would bring a clarity to each record, losing extraneous studio effects and digital noise from the ‘Solidarity’ songs and stripping away unnecessary orchestration and embellishment from the tracks that made up ‘Door To The River’.”
Author and long-term band collaborator Robin Turner explains in the sleeve notes to the release that it’s “the Director’s Cut of ‘Know Your Enemy’. The picture has been painstakingly restored, cleaned up, brightened. Although it doesn’t aim to replace the original, it most certainly enhances it.”
Last year, the band spoke to NME about the reissue, explaining that they’d been working on putting together the long-mooted re-release of their sixth album from 2001.
The album, which contained the singles ‘Found That Soul’, ‘So Why So Sad’ and ‘Let Robeson Sing’, split opinion upon its release. A sprawling record with a heavily eclectic mix of sounds and some of their most overt political imagery, it alienated much of the new fanbase who were won on their previous and most successful album ‘This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours’. However, it won a place in hardcore fans’ hearts, as well as in the history books – when they played a launch gig in Cuba to an audience that included Fidel Castro.
Asked about the progress on the reissue during a conversation with NME last year, Nicky Wire replied: “It is staring at me right now! There are two boxes of stuff. I’m sat in the studio with our engineer and it’s there, confronting me.”
He continued: “It was quite exciting because I’ve actually discovered two songs that have never been released. Unless I’ve made a fuck-up somewhere, there’s a song called ‘Rosebud’, which no-one has ever heard, and another called ‘Studies In Paralysis’ which has never been heard, plus a completely different version of ‘Let Robeson Sing’ that James [Dean Bradfield, frontman] did in his flat in London on a keyboard, and bares no resemblance to what it became.
“There are actually a lot of goodies. Even I’m quite giddy with excitement. James and Sean [Moore, drummer] weren’t arsed though…”
Wire also revealed that he plans to fulfil the band’s original intention for the record with the upcoming re-release by separating it into two separate albums called ‘Solidarity’ and ‘Door To The River’, showcasing its distinct hard-rock and more acoustic, experimental side.
Asked if they might perform special ‘Know Your Enemy’ anniversary shows, Wire replied: “I wish I could say! To be honest, there’s a lot to fucking learn. When we recorded that album, we never played in the same room. It was all purposefully on the edge. It was really punky. A lot of demos became songs, we were doing ideas on our own. I don’t think we could pull off a whole show.”
Revisiting the split reaction that ‘Know Your Enemy’ received back in 2001, Bradfield said: “Sometimes an indelible part of a band’s direction that they take is just a way to childishly wreck their own success.
“That’s what ‘Know Your Enemy’ is, to a certain degree. It’s us reacting to albums in a row, ‘Everything Must Go’ and ‘This Is My Truth’, being massive albums in Britain alone – one sold 1.3 million copies and the other 1.5 just in the UK. Then we just childishly and churlishly go and accuse ourselves of being too successful, bloated and pleased with ourselves by writing ‘Know Your Enemy’.”
He continued: “When I hear ‘Know Your Enemy’ I hear that we did a good job of dismantling the success that we’d built up over those two albums. Sometimes you thought the press had it in for you, but we probably had it in for ourselves more.”