The album has often divided opinion among fans and critics due to its decadent glam-rock sound and approach.

All lyrics are written by Richey Edwards and Nicky Wire; all music is composed by James Dean Bradfield and Sean Moore No. Indeed, the Manics did spend a fortune on recording this album, to a ridiculous extent, and this is certainly clear from the production values. Like “Nostalgic Pushead”, the rhythm section is mainly built on a percussion loop programmed by Sean Moore.

Manic Street Preachers have revealed details of the reissue of their 1993 album ‘Gold Against The Soul’.

At five and a half minutes it is the longest song on the album, but pans out impressively, with spiky guitars, prominent drums, and the lyric "Rock and Roll has a conscience", presumably as a reference to their own body of work. The B-sides are appended to the album on CD 1, whilst CD 2 offers the usual array of demos which are always interesting and impressively well developed. However, with the band's more beefed up, arena-friendly sound emerging in subsequent years, this album is no longer so at odds with the general Manics aesthetic. Granted it's nowhere near the best pressing in my collection but it's certainly nowhere near the worst either. Since the deluxe reissue is only a two-CD set (expanded album on CD 1 and demos and remixes on CD 2) they really should have made it consistent with the new album deluxe sets and the Send Away The Tigers reissue.

When asked to look back on the album, the band themselves have described Gold Against the Soul as their least favourite album and the period surrounding the album as being the most unfocused of their career. If you think I’m nit-picking about packaging, there’s no defending treating the actual music this way. When I found that demo and played it to James, he was shocked as well at how it fitted in with our later post-punk ideas. James’ room was haunted in the manor and thought that there was something coming in and turning his lights and TV on every night. I thought we’d got past the worst of that, but Gold Against The Soul 2020 is a great example of the concept in action.