When “The Golden Age Of The Grotesque” came out, seemingly all of the reviews had a portion in them mentioning the infamous The Onion parody-article that came out after “Holy Wood” sold disappointingly in America (worldwide its Marilyn Manson’s best-selling album) claiming Manson had to cancel his world tour to go door to door trying to shock middle-America. That article was believed by many to be the final nail in Marilyn Manson’s career-coffin. He had been surpassed by Eminem as conservative America’s musical public enemy #1, as people stopped being offended by him after Columbine. But I think Manson’s career was hurt before then. The “Long Hard Road Out Of Hell” autobiography demystified Marilyn Manson to show him as Brian Warner. It was like if you were watching one of the Nightmare On Elm Street movies and Freddy Kruger ripped off his burn-victim latex mask to remind you he’s really just harmless Robert Englund in reality.
Marilyn Manson worked at its best when there was the menacing mystery behind the band. Looking at those American Family Association started-rumors about Manson giving drugs to children and refusing to perform unless the audience performed animal sacrifice for him by killing (of course) puppies being thrown into the crowd, they sure seem laughable. I don’t know how people were so stupid to believe those tales (and those he sued for slander for involving kidnapping teenage runaways among other things) but because Manson kept his image so controlled they had an air of believability to those so frightened by him. So when he decided to make some money writing a book telling us all about Brian Warner, it was career suicide. Maybe he felt he had to do it because the rumors about him were so out of control he got daily death threats before concerts and people were blaming him for a spike in teenage suicide. But he should have had someone like Frank Zappa intervening against Alice Cooper going to the press to deny that he really killed that chicken on stage. Cooper’s career would have been over before it began if Zappa didn’t stop him.
But Marilyn Manson version 2.0 and 3.0 has been about trying to find ways out of being the expected satanic guy ripping up bibles on stage. With “The Golden Age Of The Grotesque” he went from Satanic metal singer to campy burlesque kingpin on stage. On the 2007 follow-up “Eat Me, Drink Me” every trace of shock was completely erased, and Manson delivered a record that was half confessional pieces about his depression after his divorce and half self-referencing campy songs for the fans who stuck with him. It definitely didn’t win him any new fans, even though Manson has set his sights on the Hot Topic set, which is mostly made up of 13 year old girls there to buy Twilight merchandise. But it was at least an attempt at something new, which was the key reason “Holy Wood” got such a negative reaction from people.
Of course there was a vocal bunch of his fanbase that were chiding them to get back to writing like it was still 1996 and he was still the enemy of the christian state. So early talk about this record had Manson going around comparing it to their most beloved record “Antichrist Superstar” in terms of being a heavy, nihilistic metal record. Well, it’s not. Not even close. “High End Of Low” sounds closer to “Holy Wood” Which isn’t a bad thing, but getting your fans excited for something it clearly isn’t is a terrible idea. Like when Oasis always claim their new record is “the album we should have made to follow (What‘s The Story) Morning Glory” and it always disappoints and they have to say it again for the follow up. Although Manson did give a far-more honest description of the album when he said “It’s about having my soul trampled on by women, but is also something that makes you laugh.” Although that basically describes his last album, minus the laughs.
Devour is the opening track, and it’s one that will automatically kill any “Spooky Kid’s” hopes of having “Antichrist Superstar II”. It is very reminiscent of “Eat Me, Drink Me”, in terms of sound and lyrical content. Although it is a little shocking to hear Manson singing “I’ll love you if you let me.” It’s as close as Marilyn Manson will ever get to creating an eHarmony profile. Hopefully.
Pretty As A Swastika kicks in sounding like the bridge of Billy Idol’s version of “Mony Mony”. And those opening seconds are as interesting as it gets unfortunately.
Leave A Scar is another bad relationship song, which also sounds like a track from “Eat Me, Drink Me”, although much better than anything on that record. Unfortunately for Manson, he’s just never going to be accepted in his maturity as a songwriter. He will always and forever be the guy who wore a thong and torn up panty hose with the scary make-up singing about being an Antichrist. He could write something on the level of “Blood On The Tracks” and it wouldn’t get him the least bit of respect. Of course continuing to wear the make-up isn’t helping. It would be interesting to see what kind of reaction he’d get doing his Kiss “Lick It Up” moment. I’m sure it wouldn’t be a positive one, though, since Manson has (face)painted himself into a corner so much in 15 years.
Four Rusted Horses is Manson’s first attempt at sounding bluesy. Featuring a chorus of “Everyone will come to my funeral to make sure I stay dead.” Manson deserves credit for going outside of his comfort-zone on this one. It’s not great, but at least he’s trying slightly new musical territory instead of rewriting his hits as he’s been guilty of forever. I’ll take this any day over yet another Beautiful People re-write.
Speaking of which. Arma-Goddamn-Motherfuckin’-Geddon was Manson’s most hyped track, the one he called the heaviest song he’d ever written that was going to have everyone going nuts. But in reality it sounds exactly like a “Disposable Teens” re-write. Which was a “Rock Is Dead” re-write. Which was a “Beautiful People” re-write. Actually, it sounds almost exactly like that “Rock Is Dead” parody-song David Cross performed on Mr. Show when he played “Marilyn Monster” who was parodying Manson’s “Mechanical Animals” days and filming a training guide for employees at the pizza franchise he owned after getting off stage. Talk about false advertising, Mr. Manson.
Blank And White is next and is as much of a “PLEASE PROTEST ME AGAIN!” song as Eminem’s recent “Underground” where he goes back to gay bashing. Everything is thrown out here: Religious controversy, violence controversy. There’s even a bleeped out line where Manson sang “"Let's shoot up the mall, the school, or the President of whatever." Begging for controversy never works. It especially looks cheap when 10 years ago Manson made an entire concept album about the reasons he’s not responsible for youth violence, wrote an essay to Rolling Stone about it, and even gave his side of the Columbine story to Michael Moore. Come on, Manson, you can be more provocative than this if you try.
Running To The Edge Of The World is as close as Manson has ever come to writing something that could have been a 80s hair metal power ballad. It’s a surprisingly good song for what it is., definitely getting the most praise by people of anything on the record. The band has made songs that sounded like this before (“Disassociative”, “A Place In The Dirt”) but this one stands the best chance of being a radio hit.
I Want To Kill You Like They Do In The Movies is another album highlight. A hypnotic 9 minute opus with Manson tossing all kinds of sexy-threats to kill his love of the moment. And with that, the mystery of why Marilyn Manson can’t seem to make a relationship work is answered. The heavy bass featured reminds you that the return of Twiggy Ramirez to the Manson-fold is a welcomed one.
WOW is Manson nearly rapping on the verses. It kind of sounds like Nine Inch Nails’s “Only”, actually. Filler.
Wight Spider is another relationship song. The best thing you can say about these is that they are better thought-out and delivered than the ones on “Eat Me, Drink Me”. This song wouldn’t sound out of place on “Mechanical Animals”.
Unkillable Monster is surprisingly tame for a title like that. And unfortunately it sounds like another “Eat Me, Drink Me” retread.
We’re From America is a pretty bad, repetitive song. It was the first leaked track from the album, and when I heard it I knew his promises of a return to the Antichrist sound were severely exaggerated. It’s just a plodding punk-sounding number with a bunch of repeated slogans that you’d expect him to write. It just makes you remember it has been a hell of a long time since he actually pushed any boundaries. A pure filler track you question why he attempted to draw any attention to.
I Have To Look Up Just To See Hell My, that looks like a Fall Out Boy song title. Manson does seem like he’s been a little affected by the emo revolution, although he accused My Chemical Romance of being copycats of his for some reason I can‘t figure out.
Into The Fire A piano ballad. This kind of sounds like something Pulp would do for “This Is Hardcore”. Manson doesn’t have the voice to do constant ballads. One or two is fine, but this album pushes it. It’s not a bad song, but Manson groaning on yet another song is getting tiresome by this point. He has a great scream, but his voice wasn’t made to do ballads this much.
15 harkens back to the days Manson was big into numerology. 15 was the number of the “Mechanical Animals” era. It started off because his birthday is January 5th, then he changed the “I” and “S” in his logo into a “1” and “5”. There were 15 tracks on that album counting the CD Rom-only song, it debuted at #1, slipped in #5 in its 2nd week and then dropped to #15 in its third. Although this time the 15 seems to only correspond to 1/5 being his birthday mentioned in the lyrics.
Lyrically, Marilyn Manson tried on the emo-suit and seems to have liked it. I guess his idea of “maturity” is talking mostly about relationships, rather than discussing The Worm turning into the Antichrist Superstar or Omega leading a spin-off of Ziggy Stardust. He had to change, obviously, since the shock-rocker career can only take you so far. But while this album isn’t awful, it’s still fairly mediocre. He used to be pretty imaginative (even if he was just morphing someone else’s ideas into his own) so you have to wonder where that imagination has gone. The album will also be hurt by Manson talking it up so much. Once you mention it housing “some of the most violent songs we’ve done” and it doesn’t feature any that fit that bill, you’re going to disappoint your fans. And maybe they would have otherwise enjoyed the record if they hadn’t been mislead, as it should please Marilyn Manson fans for the most part. But it still is far from being their best work.
RATING: 2/5
No comments:
Post a Comment