Professional ratings
Aggregate scores
Source	Rating
Metacritic	83/100
Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic
Clash	8/10
Gigwise	9/10
The Guardian
The Independent
Mojo
NME	8/10
PopMatters	8/10
The Telegraph
Q

Futurology is the twelfth studio album by Welsh alternative rock band Manic Street Preachers. It was released on 7 July 2014 by record label Columbia. The album features contributions from Green Gartside, Nina Hoss, Georgia Ruth, Cian Ciaran and Cate Le Bon.

Supported by two singles, "Walk Me to the Bridge" and the title track "Futurology", the album has been met with critical acclaim and is their highest charting album since Send Away the Tigers, peaking and debuting at number 2 on the UK Album Chart.

Futurology was the Manics' second new album to be released in the space of a year, having been recorded alongside 2013's Rewind the Film, an album described by the group as being "gentle and delicate" in contrast to the icy, multi-layered and angular Futurology. The album was recorded in Germany with Alex Silva, with whom the band worked on The Holy Bible in 1994, and at Faster Studios, Wales. The album was described to be inspired by modern art and the sense of motion that the band experienced touring the heart of Europe in 2011 in support of National Treasures – The Complete Singles.

About the European inspiration that took over the band in the new record, singer and guitarist James Dean Bradfield stated that: "We started touring mainland Europe in late '91 so obviously we've seen Belfast change in front of our eyes, we've seen Berlin change unbelievably and parts of Belgium… every city in Britain we've seen change. I'd never been abroad before I was in a band, Actually, I'd been abroad once, I'd been to Bristol."

Bradfield also tackled the subject of the many guest that have appeared on the last two Manic Street Preachers records, Rewind the Film and Futurology: "I'm 12 albums in - I know my voice can only do certain things, and if I can't take other people singing on the track then I really have got a Napoleon complex. I'm short enough to have one…".

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Wikipedia