Featuring never-before-seen footage, it tells the story of the band's landmark number one album 'This is My Truth Tell Me Yours'

Manic Street Preachers have shared a trailer for their upcoming new film ‘Truth & Memory’. See it first on NME below.

Featuring never-before-seen footage, the film was directed by long-time collaborator Kieran Evans, and tells the story of the band’s landmark No.1 1998 album ‘This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours’ – which the band recently re-released.

The full film will premiere on Youtube here at 7pm on Thursday January 17.

“It all started on a wintry October day last year with me taking delivery of a plastic bag full of VHS and DV tapes shot by photographer Mitch Ikeda and Wire, a jumble of audio cassettes and mini-discs and a large selection of photos and polaroids,” Evans told NME. “The initial plan was for me to make a fifteen minute short with a rule to only use material from October 1997 through to November 1998. The VHS and DV tapes probably hadn’t been viewed for over fifteen years and there was little info on what each one contained. I spent weeks scrolling through videotapes so as to discover what might have been captured during those times and what might be usable.

“Luckily each tape I viewed contained a little bit of gold dust; incredible events and revealing moments had been filmed that couldn’t be ignored and so the idea of a fifteen minute short got jettisoned for something a lot longer and expansive.”

He continued: “There was clearly no real plan to what Mitch and Wire shot over this period other than to make a record of those times, be it recording Tolerate in Rockfield Studios to seeing thousands of fans queuing in Cardiff for a midnight album signing of TIMTTMY or to capturing a bizarre promo trip in Spain. There are no new interviews or footage of the band in Truth & Memory. It’s just their voices captured on tape or cassette at the time, music recorded through a camera mic or a desk mix, the quality of the footage in places is lo-res, the sound a bit hit and miss in parts.”

“And there’s definitely no tip of the hat to HD formats and tidying up material. Instead, Wire and myself wanted a deliberately lo-fi collage ‘feel’ to tell the story and I think we’ve achieved that with this film.

Evans added: “In some respects, the footage in the film was never really meant to be seen outside the bands inner circle but by making Truth & Memory, I found myself able to take a peek inside that world and to offer a tiny window in to an extraordinary time in the life of the Manics.”

Speaking to NME about the recent re-release, bassist Nicky Wire said: “James [Dean Bradfield, frontman] has remastered it, I found all the demos. They’re amazing – all on cassettes, recorded in someone’s front room. We’ve put [fan favourite B-side] ‘Prologue To History’ on the album now and kicked off ‘Nobody Loved You’. We’ve moved that onto disc two with a great demo that we’ve found. It’s packed full of really interesting and intimate stuff, as well as us in the studio and off the leash on certain songs like ‘Tsunami’ that are much more raw.

“There are some amazing remixes too – by people like Mogwai, Massive Attack and Cornelius. It was a great period where people would take your work and transform it into something really special.”

Asked about their other plans for the immediate future, Wire said: “Other than that, it’ll be back to studio life. James feels like another album could come really quickly at the moment – not that we’ve done anything. He’s in that mode though.”

The band will then head out on a run of UK and Ireland shows in Spring 2019. Full dates are below. Tickets are available here.

Sunday 12 May – Dublin – Olympia Theatre
Tuesday 14 May – Cambridge – Corn Exchange
Wednesday 15 May – Bath – Forum
Friday 17 May – London – Shepherd’s Bush Empire
Saturday 18 May – London – Shepherd’s Bush Empire
Monday 20 May – Manchester – Ritz
Tuesday 21 May – Manchester – Ritz
Thursday 23 May – Birmingham – Academy 1
Friday 24 May – Southampton – Guildhall
Sunday 26 May – Edinburgh – Usher Hall
Monday 27 May – York – Barbican
Thursday 30 May – Liverpool – Olympia
Friday 31 May – Leicester – De Montfort Hall
Saturday 29 June – Cardiff – Cardiff Castle