The Holy Bible

Moore said the band felt they had been going a bit astray with Gold Against the Soul, so they set out to return to their grass roots. Bradfield said they had become a bit too rockist. They looked back to the records that inspired them at the start, among them Magazine, Wire, Skids, Public Image Ltd, Gang of Four, Joy Division, Siouxsie and the Banshees and early Simple Minds. Epic had proposed recording in Barbados. The band wanted to avoid that, and instead worked with sound engineer Alex Silva at the "absolutely tiny" Sound Space Studios in Cardiff. The recording took four weeks. Mark Freegard mixed it, and "She Is Suffering" was produced by Steve Brown. Bradfield said the album was built with academic discipline, so that each song was like an essay.

Edwards wrote 70 to 75 percent of the lyrics according to Bradfield, though Wire later thought his own share was nearer 30 percent after finding more in his notebooks. The words range across prostitution, American consumerism, British imperialism, freedom of speech, the Holocaust, serial killers, the death penalty, political revolution, childhood and fascism. Wire said "Mausoleum" and "The Intense Humming of Evil" were inspired by band visits to the former concentration camps at Dachau and Belsen. Several tracks feature sampled speech, among them a documentary about prostitution on "Yes", the voice of John Hurt on "Faster", J. G. Ballard on "Mausoleum" and Albert Finney from The Dresser at the end of "P.C.P.".

The cover, designed by Edwards, is a triptych by Jenny Saville titled Strategy (South Face/Front Face/North Face). Saville allowed the use of her work for free after Edwards described each song to her. It was also the first time the band used the Gill Sans typeface with a reversed R on an album sleeve. The album reached number 6 in the UK but did not chart in mainland Europe or North America. Melody Maker called it the sound of a group in extremis, hurtling towards a private armageddon. In 2011 the NME ranked it number 1 in its list of the 50 darkest albums ever, and in 2005 it topped a BBC Newsnight poll of viewers' favorite albums.

The band played it in full for the first time in December 2014, beginning with dates in Glasgow, Manchester and London. An expanded edition appeared on 6 December 2004, and The Holy Bible 20 followed in December 2014.