Know Your Enemy

As personal as the songs on Know Your Enemy may be, there's always a definite political thread tied up in there, too. Though the band's agenda can get mighty opaque at times, the album feels throughout like some sort of call to arms. And they're not just preaching to the converted. Rather than aiming stylistically at a certain audience, Know Your Enemy finds the Manics attempting to write a protest song in just about every genre. This project, stretched out over 16 tracks and 75 minutes, quickly reaches epic proportions, with an ambition approached only by the magnitude of its flaws.