Manic Street Preachers and Steps are battling for the UK's number one album this week

Manic Street Preachers are currently battling it out with Steps in the race for this week’s number one in the UK albums chart.

One of the acts is very likely to displace Drake from the top of the charts after the rapper scored the top spot last week with his latest album ‘Certified Lover Boy’.

The Manics are currently leading the way with ‘The Ultra Vivid Lament’, with yesterday’s (September 13) chart update from The Official Charts Company revealing that the band are currently 3000 sales ahead of Steps’ seventh studio album ‘What The Future Holds Pt. 2′.

The Manics’ LP racked up the most physical sales over the weekend, while Steps’ album is currently the most downloaded of the week.

The Stranglers are currently at number three in the UK albums chart with ‘Dark Matters’, their first album in nine years, while The Vaccines are in at number four with ‘Back In Love City’.

Drake’s ‘Certified Lover Boy’ is currently at number five, while Metallica‘s ‘The Black Album’ is poised for a top 10 chart re-entry following its re-release last week to mark the record’s 30th anniversary.

Speaking to NME last month about ‘The Ultra Vivid Lament’, Manics frontman James Dean Bradfield spoke about the experience of writing music during the coronavirus-enforced lockdowns last year.

“To actually have a theory about life or a loose concept that you could hang a record on seemed impossible,” Bradfield said. “The escape was literally checking to see that the world around you wasn’t crumbling when you wrote a song.

“Lockdown had the element of a waking dream for a lot of people, especially the first one last year. Writing music was a way of pinching myself to say, ‘There’s still a part of life that works in the same way that it did, albeit in a strange way’.”