This review is hard to write.
The reason is simple – I like Marilyn Manson. A lot. I think he’s one of the few genuine 110% Rock stars we have left. I think he’s up there with Iggy Pop, David Bowie, or Freddie Mercury. I’m not kidding. I’ve seen him live 4 times, and each time has been a revelation that’s made me grateful all over again for the existence of rock n’ roll in an uncaring universe, and I think he’s a man whose genius extends far beyond mere marketing skill and image management, that he is in fact a towering creative talent that revels in being misunderstood by most of his fan base, never mind his detractors. He is, in short, quite brilliant, and 5 of his 6 albums so far have been master classes in brutal, intelligent commentary and dissection of the American disease.
And then we come to album number 7 – The Golden Age Of Grotesque. And it all starts to feel like it’s unravelling.
That’s not immediately apparent though. Things open well enough with Thaeter – a classic Manson instrumental intro track with the sound of a movie projector and an interesting childlike-but spooky sound loop leading into This is the New Shit. Manson’s always had industrial leanings, but the electronica is stronger here than it’s ever been, and more polished, even when it bursts into the white noise of the chorus. The lyric is also classic Manson repetition of a few key phrases (‘Everything has been said before/nothing left to say any more’, for example), the call and response chorus is fake-dumb-brilliance, and one may assume that the closing line (‘let us/entertain you’) is not intentionally lifted from Manson’s pop counterpart Mr Williams (though if it was, it would be a classic and quite brilliant Manson subversion).
So far, so ok – it’s not innovative, but it’s certainly not bad by Manson’s standards, and therefore comfortably above most other albums out there, and mOBSCENE continues the mood – like many of Mansons’ second album tracks, it’s an obvious single – perhaps a touch too obvious. Sure, the cheerleader chant of ‘Be Obscene baby/and not heard’ is brutally cute, but is there anything here that he hasn’t already done better with, say, The Fight Song? Musically, there’s no progression from previous albums either, and you’d swear you’ve heard that opening guitar sound on prior singles. Lyrically it’s pretty good, at least in the verses, but the choruses start to drag by sheer repetition in the end, which is a worrying attribute for a 3 and a half minute song.
Then Doll-Digga Buzz-Buzz Ziggety-Zag just sweeps you off your feet with it’s manic toms-from-hell rhythm and buzzing guitars, and you think maybe everything’s going to be all right. Manson’s humour, always an underrated aspect of his writing, is really coming out to play on this one, and it’s a wonder he can sing straight through the shit eating grin he must be wearing. The lyrics are fantastic, and just kick your ass with sheer inventiveness and perverse brilliance. The did-I-just-hear-that? factor really hits hard, and the song doesn’t outstay it’s welcome. A fine track.
Then comes Use Your Fist and Not Your Mouth, and the opening guitar and drum sounds, which are already incredibly overproduced drop into a decidedly industrial-meets-hip-hop sounding drum-machine-and –synth voice. The lyrical rhythm starts to shift too, rhymes moving between middle and ends of verses. It sounds quite promising on paper, but it’s somehow unconvincing on disk. Partly it’s because, unusually for Manson, he doesn’t seem to be using it to say anything. It’s really just an outpouring of purposeless negativity – nothing wrong with that, except we’ve learned to expect more. The bridge lyric too seems to be a recycling of previous song concepts with considerably less panache. Oddly unsatisfying.
Then the title track comes in, and you start to think maybe everything’s going to be ok again. The song features mainly piano led verses with a bass drum that sounds like someone thumping wet meat with a crowbar, and a fantastic, breathtaking lyrical celebration/documentation/criticism of partying at the end of civilisation. This is the kind of inspiration we pay our money for, and for one song, it’s money well spent.
So far, so fine. It’s a very rare artist who can produce a masterpiece every time, and considering he’s managed 3 on the trot, a slightly-less-good-but-still-a-bundle-of-laughs album is far from a disaster – a good palate cleanser of some slightly shallower fun before the next big epic. Trouble is, the album doesn’t stop here, though after a while you start to wish it had. What happens next is two things – one is the track (s)Aint starts playing, and the second, not long after that, is that the wheels fall off.
We’ve got more of this electro-goth-disco production, pumping but very artificial sounding drums, and musically it’s just dull. Manson’s voice is brilliantly produced, but the lyric is just boring self aggrandisement mixed with an unexplained misogyny that’s just depressing. Oh, and the chorus just flat out sucks (‘What’s my name?/ what’s my name?/Hold the S because I am an ‘ain’t’). Wha’? This from the guy who brought you ‘I am the God of F**k’. Not good.
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It doesn’t get much better with Ka-Boom Ka-Boom either. Some of the lyrical flourishes are fun (‘Entertain but never trust anyone sober’, for example) but the bridge is more malevolent sexuality (‘I won’t do with you, I’ll do it to you/don’t say no, just say now’) and again, the chorus is just dull. He even recycles his Nazi rally crowd noise trick, but the slogans he’s yelling this time are so unmemorable that, well, I’ve already forgotten them.
Slutgarden, as you might have gathered from the title, doesn’t up the quality level much. This is more of the same, minus anything remotely ‘big picture’. Quite why Manson thinks we’d have such an interest in the dark paranoia of his sex life is beyond me, but it fails to deliver anything stronger than indifference to this reviewer, and unfortunately, his fellow musicians seem to have sunk to the occasion neatly. This is dull, plodding, and uninspired.
Spade is more of the same, if not less (‘you drained my heart/left a spade/but there’s still traces/of me in your veins’ for heavens sake) and whilst there’s some interesting manipulation of guitar sounds, it all feels like a very academic and clinical exercise – there’s a mind at work, but no heart or spirit at all. The guitar solo might remind you of ‘Coma White’, but for all the wrong reasons – that song was far superior to anything on this album. Chilling, and sadly not in a good way.
Para-nior is arguably the low point – disembodies female voices list a series of shallow reasons why they f**k Manson, and Manson damns them all roundly in the chorus. There’s nothing likeable about this, but neither is it dark enough to provoke the kind of reaction that, say, Eminem’s ‘Kim’ might. That song managed to make an art form out of violent misogyny (however uncomfortable and unpleasant a proposition that might be) whereas this just leaves one feeing mildly embarrassed – like watching a puppy dog hump a teddy bear. When you’re aware of how brilliant this particular puppy can be, it’s just painful, and a little saddening.
‘The Bright Young Things’ goes a little way to redressing the balance, as a tip of the hat to his loyal fan base and a rallying cry, with nice energy and some well placed stuttering guitars, but we’re back to more self worship with ‘Better of Two Evils’ and ‘Vodevil’. One wonders if all that hanging out with Eminem has given Manson the idea that he should be more ‘hip-hop’ in posturing, but the trouble with such a move is, we’ve come to expect far more from him than simple dumb ‘I’m-the-baddest-thing-ever’ posing. The fact is, once upon a time, he didn’t have to tell us how bad he was – he was too busy living it. Now though, it just seems to smack of a desperate attempt to claw back some credibility and shock value. It’s a shame, because at his creative peak, he’s got no need for such moves – his mind and muse naturally draw him to subject areas and ideas that will generate controversy and comment by the bucket full. This definitely smacks of a peculiar mix of laziness and, paradoxically, trying too hard.
There’s a closing track called Obsequey (the Death of Art), another instrumental that’s far less convincing than the opener. Oh, and if you’re lucky enough to get the limited edition version you get the ‘bonus tracks’ of the Tainted Love single and something called Baboon Rape Party that’s exactly as bad as it sounds.
And then that’s it. Oddly, it does make me long for a new Manson album – one where he sweeps this thing under the carpet with a slice of genuinely shocking, intelligent and brutal music. That way, we can put this down to mid career burn-out, a temporary creative dip caused by the completion of the trilogy of Antichrist, Mechanical Animals and Holy Wood, and not the beginning of the end.
Here’s hoping.
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