The best thing to come out of Wales is normally the M4 motorway right?.......but, whats the best record ever to come out of Wales?
Tom Jones's "Delilah"?......no.......that Manic Street Preachers tune?.......definitely fucking NOT!.....Catatonia's "Road Rage", which is a strong contender as thee WORST song ever written....so it isn't that?!
I think you've already guessed, as this post is about The Young Marble Giants' colossal apocalypso ode to the creeping shadow of the nuclear holocaust.
If there was ever a video made for this, it should show devasting explosions vaporising children in slow motion. The contrast with the peace and tranquility of this darkly beautiful tune, would ram home the message better than any of the recent slue of post-apocalypse movies that seem to be de rigueur these days.
My favourite nuclear attack scene (everyone has one don't they?) happens to be from a BBC production called "Threads"from 1984 (click here to watch it),an epoch when total annihilation could have happened at any second. The moment when it goes silent as ET burns in the intense heat is just one part that would fit nicely in any video for "Final Day".
Thankfully, YMG came from an era when we didn't have any video's for songs by outsiders such as they. They could maintain that long lost aire of mystery that absolutely nobody has anymore. I was shocked to find out that the YMG's were real people, so alien was their sound,and they looked ever-so slightly android-like on the dim half-light cover of their lone album.
Such stealthy power in so short a song,and such a short lived group.
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