Manics lock The Holy Bible Live for October

Manic Street Preachers announced on 4 September the release of *The Holy Bible Live*, a live album issued with a concert film by Kieran Evans under the title *Be Pure, Be Vigilant, Behave*. The package is set for 23 October 2026 and also includes a Steven Wilson spatial audio remix of the original 1994 studio album.

Nicky Wire described the live recording as vicious. He spoke of memories of 1994 and confirmed that new material is being written ahead of the co-headline UK arena tour with Suede. The October dates sit only days after the release itself, turning the anniversary package into the immediate backdrop for the shows still to come.

From Blackwood to *The Holy Bible*

The Manics formed in Blackwood, Caerphilly, in 1986 around Nicky Wire and cousins James Dean Bradfield and Sean Moore. They became a central part of the 1990s Cool Cymru movement. Their early run moved from the *New Art Riot* EP through *Generation Terrorists* in 1992 and *Gold Against the Soul* the following year before *The Holy Bible* arrived in 1994. That record remains one of the sharpest points in the catalogue: dense, confrontational and still the reference point whenever the band revisit their mid-nineties work on stage.

Later albums kept the line-up intact and the writing restless. *The Ultra Vivid Lament* appeared in 2021; *Critical Thinking* followed in 2025, preceded by singles including *Decline & Fall* and *Hiding in Plain Sight*. A Steven Wilson extended mix of *1985* also surfaced in 2024, so his spatial treatment of *The Holy Bible* continues a recent thread of remix and re-presentation rather than standing alone. The live album and film now place the 1994 record back at the centre of the current cycle, not as a museum piece but as a set still being performed with the force Wire called vicious.

Arena dates still ahead

The co-headline UK arena tour with Suede provides the immediate live context. Suede, formed in London in 1989 and fronted by Brett Anderson, bring their own Britpop-era weight to the bill. Their debut topped the UK Albums Chart in 1993 and won the Mercury Music Prize; the pairing therefore places two catalogues that defined the first half of the nineties in venues across Britain and Ireland.

What arrives in late October is therefore a three-part package: the live album, the Evans film, and Wilson’s spatial remix of the 1994 original. What follows is the arena run, with new songs already in progress according to Wire. Tickets for the remaining UK dates are now in circulation; the release itself is still a little over a month away. For a band whose history has always turned on the friction between record and stage, *The Holy Bible Live* puts that friction back on the schedule in plain sight.