This is just the first of three posts on the new album; there’s also a review of the leaked demos, as well as a newer review of the officially released album.
‘
I’m not the fan of Marilyn Manson I used to be.
I remember hearing so many things about how fucked up the man was, killing puppies on stage and supposedly influencing people to gun down their schools. Curious as to how such an individual’s music would sound, I bought the greatest hits album, Lest We Forget, and fell in love with the band. Every song on the album had a certain quality about it that engulfed you completely in whatever feelings it was conveying, and after a single listening, I was hooked. Over the course of those next few months, I ended up with almost twenty records; everything from full albums to EPs, bootlegs and singles. I was obsessed, and would listen to the band all the time.
Then I joined The Heirophant, the self proclaimed largest unofficial Manson community, and was amazed at all the different discussion, analysis and downloads of everything that could possibly be related to Marilyn Manson. Links to older recordings, photos, art, discussions about deeper meanings behind his works, and even his other endeavours (particularly his painting and directing) kept me reading for hours everyday and fed my addiction.
After ages spent there, reading and discussing all the rumours of a new Marilyn Manson album, it happened; Eat Me Drink Me was released. I hastily bought it, as it was the first “new” Manson release since I became a fan. Popping it into my cd player, I listened to it for about a week before it was thrown into my cd shelf, and has gathered dust ever since. I was really disappointed by the whole album, it lacked what had made all his other work amazing. It lacked power, anger, frustration, sadness, evil, good; in fact, the album seemed devoid of any emotion at all. It felt too faked. This isn’t to say it was BAD; just not good. You could hear that Manson had improved his singing over the years since their last album, and Skold had done a decent enough job on all the music, but it felt hollow. Maybe it was the lack of band participation, with only Manson and Skold actually participating in the creative process, or the album may of been rushed, the point is that as an album, it almost completely destroyed my hope that Marilyn Manson still had something to offer.
January last year, seven months after the release of the album, the news hit that Tim Skold had left the band, and Twiggy Ramirez (aka Jeordy White) had come back. Twiggy Ramirez was a member of the band during it’s better times, and talks of a new album with him in the band again prompted immediate interest from me. Maybe with the switch in band members meant the music might be as it used to be; powerful and meaningful.
And that brings us to now. I haven’t been to the Manson community in awhile, but yesterday I decided to see if they had anything new to report about the band and the new album. I went there, to find out that a) a portion of the album, entitled The High End Of Low, had leaked, and b) Marilyn Manson had released the song ‘We’re From America’ for free download. I had to listen to it, just to see what they’d gone for in sound. On my travelling to the band’s website, I was confronted by the image that sits at the top of this post. Showing a new logo and the lead singer’s look. Marilyn Manson (it always annoys me that the band and lead singer have the same name; makes it hard to differentiate between the two when writing. I’m talking about the lead singer now just so you know) always adopts a new look for an album. For his earlier records (such as Mechanical Animals), he sometimes became a character from the album itself. This practice itself being influenced directly by David Bowie.
The new look however reminds me straight away of the personae he used for the Holy Wood album, which I blame on the darkness of the shot and the choice of hat, which looks similar to those used in promotional shots when Holy Wood was released. But that isn’t where the similarities ended for me.
Looking at the cover for the new single, anyone who has the band’s older albums will instantly make the connection between this artwork and the artwork for the 1998 record, Mechanical Animals. As one of it’s themes, the album art, in the majority of the package, referenced the number fifteen wherever it could, from hidden messages in the booklet, to the number of tracks, and even the band name on the spine of the spine of the cd case (which read MAR1LYN MAN5ON). Since the release of that album, and the end of that era, there hasn’t been any use of this theme since. Eleven years down the track, the band is bringing the theme back. Not only is there this logo on the ‘We’re From America’, but Marilyn Manson has been quoted as saying that the album will have fifteen tracks, the final track of which being called ‘15’.
Now, the song itself to me sounded very much like the apparent Antichrist Superstar b-side, ‘Astonishing Panorama Of The End Times’, in both it’s heavy guitar and drums, and vocal delivery. A lot of repeated lyrics and catchy verses makes the track very easy to sing along to, and it has a very anti-America theme to it, much like that of older albums, where Marilyn Manson criticized the country’s views and the way society eats up everything the media throws at them.
We’re From America is a decent song after what was churned out for 2006’s Eat Me Drink Me, and if the album is just as good, I think it might be what brings me back to the band. I guess we’ll find out when The High End Of Low comes out next month.
