Accomplished Welsh rock band, the Manic Street Preachers, set Moscow's B1 club alight on July 23 with a spread of tracks from across their 20-year career. It was the group's first Moscow gig and part of their follow-up tour after releasing last year's album "Send Away The Tigers".
The band's eighth album shows the group's mellower side - a stark contrast to the raucous punk sound that marked their enty to the British rock scene in the late 1980s.
They were the first of a new wave of successful Welsh rock banks, followed by acts such as the Stereophonics, Catatonia and Super Furry Animals.
The group cites punk bands as their original inspiration. Bassist Nicky Wire says: "I guess the big ones, the building blocks of our lives were the Sex Pistols, The Clash, The Who, the Stones, Public Enemy and Guns N' Roses." He also says the group is getting back to the raw sound that made them famous.
All three Manics - James Dean Bradfield on vocals and guitar, Nicky Wire on bass, and Sean Moore on drums - come from the mining town of Blackwood in south Wales, and the group are diehard socialists with strong roots in the region's coal pits.
Visiting Moscow as been one of the group's ambitions for a long time.
Initially the enfants terribles of the music press, the Manics confounded their critics and went on to become one of Britain's best rock bands of the 1990s, winning a string of Album of the Year awards for their 1996 masterpiece, `Everything Must Go'.
Their 1994 album, The Holy Bible, was highly acclaimed by music critics and often appears on lists of best ever albums. The band is making a new album next year, which they say will hark back to the uncompromising style of the Holy Bible.
Hard core Manics fans will no doubt welcome the band's move back to their post-punk roots.
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