‘The Ultra Vivid Lament’ is the 14th studio album from Manic Street Preachers. It is both reflection and reaction; a record that gazes in isolation across a cluttered room, fogged by often painful memories, to focus on an open window framing a gleaming vista of land melting into sea and endless sky.

'Resistance Is Futile, the band's 13th studio album, heralds a return to a classic Manics sound described by the band as "widescreen melancholia". The songs on the album are the first recorded in the band’s new Door to the River studio (near Newport).

Of their first new recordings in four years, the band said: "The main themes of ‘Resistance is Futile’ are memory and loss; forgotten history; confused reality and art as a hiding place and inspiration. It’s obsessively melodic - in many ways referencing both the naive energy of ‘Generation Terrorists’ and the orchestral sweep of ‘Everything Must Go’. After delay and difficulties getting started, the record has come together really quickly over the last few months through a surge of creativity and some old school hard work."

Manic Street Preachers' 10th studio album Postcards From A Young Man features guest vocals from Ian McCulloch on one track ("Some Kind of Nothingness"), John Cale on piano ("Auto-Intoxication") and Duff McKagen playing bass ("A Billion Balconies Facing The Sun"). Manics bassist Nicky Wire sings lead vocals on "The Future Has Been Here 4 Ever" alongside drummer Sean Moore on the trumpet. Postcards From A Young Man is the follow up to 2009s Journal for Plague Lovers but is musically very different and more in the vein of Send Away The Tigers and Everything Must Go with unashamed soaring choruses, lots of strings and gospel choirs. It was recorded in Cardiff with producer Dave Eringa and mixed by Chris Lord Alge in the US.