James Dean Bradfield and co. have come a long, long way from the bratty Welsh punks who planned to release one album and break up; theirs is a lengthy, by turns tragic and triumphant story – one that the band seemed eager to bookend with 2017’s portentously-titled documentary, ‘Escape From History’. But the Manic Street Preachers are a band that thrive on friction: their most difficult era, in the mid-nineties, produced an unstoppable trio of solid-gold albums; in all their best songs, anthemic, blood-pumping melodies carry caustic, brutalist lyrics; and in simplest terms, their relentless inner punks just can’t quite defeat their knack for brilliant pop songs. They may have spent whole albums trying to tear these two sides of their id apart, but both are the lifeblood of the Manics: a new album in 2018, and a chance to sing along with the best of that back-catalogue, is an excuse to celebrate that schizophrenia, the beauty and the ugliness in all of us.

Fri 27 Apr, 7.30pm at The Genting Arena, Perimeter Rd, Marston Green, Birmingham B40 1NT, £42 – £54 theticketfactory.com