Marilyn Manson

The gruesome musical tradition of Florida continued into the 1990s with Marylin Manson, a band that became legendary locally in 1992 and whose fame was cemented by the EP Get Your Gunn (Interscope) and the album Portrait Of An American Family (Nothing, 1994).
Mr. Manson (Brian Warner, born in Ohio) draws inspiration from Alice Cooper’s school of singing (and androgynous theatricality). Guitarist Daisy Berkowitz, who launches into devastating turbine-like solos, carries more of Northern psychedelia in his blood than Southern boogie. Twiggy Ramirez (bass) and Sara Lee Lucas (drums) make up a rhythm section that is both essential and insidious, specializing in martial beats. Madonna Wayne Gacy’s keyboards embellish the harmonies with nightmarish tones. The names are all feminine, but the bodies are all regularly male; the surnames are all dedicated to famous “serial killers” of the era. The staging is completed by the lyrics, which are among the most gruesome and vulgar, second only to those of Type-O Negative—a concentration of atrocities ranging from rape to pedophilia.
In the manifesto track, Cake And Sodomy, Manson solemnly/charon-like declares, “I am the god of fuck,” to which virgins are led en masse for the initiation ritual. Its mechanically punctuated chorus epitomizes their melodic sobriety. Lunchbox (also on the EP) sketches the bearing of Nine Inch Nails, but with a much more restrained and less animalistic boogie in the background—ultimately more mature.

Many of the tracks rely on very basic harmonic qualities: a macabre-pounding cadence and a slimy psychopathic wail delivered with malice. Such is Organ Grinder, with bass leading the dance and hallucinatory keyboard noises; Dogma, with its small satanic samples; and especially Dope Hat, in which the group finally betrays the insane cabaret horror vibe of Alice Cooper. Despite their horrific excesses, the “black” riff of Sweet Tooth and the cryptic ceremonial tones of My Monkey (complete with an irritating voice from beyond) add little to this basic template.
These Southern maniacs lack the jaws of Al Jourgensen and Trent Reznor. They are the natural heirs of Black Sabbath and Kiss hard rock. Despite Mr. Manson’s somewhat pathetic mask, a late decadent still trying to shock with 1960s tricks, the band provides a social snapshot of an America dominated by television myths and oppressed by crime.
Manson is even ordained a priest by Anton LaVey, prophet of the Church of Satan in San Francisco.

Smells Like Children (Interscope, 1995) is a collection of remixes of songs from the first album and covers of their favorite tracks. This time the sound is decadent rather than brutal, but the perversion is so slimy that these tracks truly become episodes of a black mass, from the hypnotic tribal crescendo of Everlasting Cocksucker (i.e., Cake And Sodomy) to the frenzied zombie ballet of Dance Of The Dope Hats (Dope Hat). The maniacal beat and lycanthropic register of Nine Inch Nails dominate Kiddie Grinder (Organ Grinder) and many other remixes, but the tragic, almost symphonic depth, industrial cacophonies, and Wagnerian psychological violence recall Foetus or Type-O Negative. The Manson who wails psychotically in the melodramatic scenario of Diary Of A Dope Fiend (Dope Hat) suggests a more modest horror cabaret. The more or less avant-garde interludes reveal ambitions better left in the drawer, as they are largely beyond the group’s reach.

The new masters of hell’s ceremony return with Antichrist Superstar (Interscope, 1996) to the visceral and abrasive sound of their debut album. Unfortunately, they do so in a much more direct and less imaginative way, essentially playing crude thrash-metal (Irresponsible Hate Anthem), at most a bit melodic (the single The Beautiful People). Only the theatricality remains, with the continuous oscillation of the vocals between satanic screams and angelic whispers (Tourniquet). The most grotesque dramatization occurs in the title track, with Nazi chants, reversed choirs, Black Sabbath riffs, war-dance cadences, and nightmare distortions. The peaks of violence on the record are Little Horn and 1996 (epileptic like Ministry), but they are treated as marginal episodes. And the loss of guitarist Daisy Berkowitz will be felt. They have freed themselves from the ghost of Nine Inch Nails, but unfortunately it turns out there was no other substance.

The regression to 1970s' glam was complete on Mechanical Animals (Nothing, 1998), an album that surrenders to the worst nightmares of David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust, emphasizing the apocalyptic (Last Day On Earth, Come White) over the decadent. The Dope Show resurrects Gary Glitter's ghost. I Don't Like The Drugs winks at the Spiritualized. A few fast-paced numbers (Posthuman, I Want To Disappear, New Model No 15, the latter a variant of My Sharona) rock hard, but mostly Marilyn Manson has become yet another aging maudit poet (Speed Of Pain).

Surprisingly, at least one star is not sinking in his own fame and money: Marilyn Manson. Holy Wood (Nothing, 2000) ranks as his most beastly album. His inspiration is wearing thin, as proven by the fact that the glam-boogie of Disposable Teens sounds like The Beautiful People and the melodic power ballad Lamb Of God sounds like Speed Of Pain, but the overall vision is still disquieting and powerful. God Eat God is a lame overture, but The Love Song roars and shakes like his classics, and The Fight Song and The Death Song are two of his most incendiary hard-rock numbers. The mildly anthemic President Dead sustain the mood for a while, but Marilyn Manson commits the worst possible crime for a rock album: monotony. After a few more songs, it begins to sound like he is repeating the same riff and the same vocal progression over and over again.
After creating a myth of perversion, Manson chronicles the lost soul dissolving in a burning hell and the lasting, terrifying echoes of its agony. As an antichrist, he has few rivals. As a musician, he can still rock. He may not be alive, but he is still kicking.

Manson completely drops the Antichrist persona on The Golden Age of Grotesque (Interscope, 2003), a collection of high-school jokes that bestow on him the title of "Alice Cooper for the year 2000 generation". This Is The New Shit, mOBSCENE and the anthemic Use Your Fist and Not Your Mouth are easy to remember and to laugh at. The monster has become a clown, but at least he's a funny one. It is also one of his least musical albums, but that is precisely the point.

Having plunged to the bottom, Brian Warner virtually abandoned his decadent damned persona (despite preserving the childish moniker) and revealed a more intimate side (as intimate as he could get). Instead of continuing to pour self-parody on his fans, Marilyn Manson seriously tried to communicate in the songs of Eat Me Drink Me (2007), such as Heart Shaped Glasses. The fact that the album shunned the old bombast and grand guignol and favored simpler, leaner arrangements helped. Instead of sounding like Alice Cooper in physical hell, Warner began to sound like Neil Young in a psychological hell.

The High End Of Low (Interscope, 2009) and Born Villain (2012) evoked the vision of a melancholy clown forced to repeat his routine in order to pay the bills.

Later albums include: The Pale Emperor (2015), Heaven Upside Down (2017), We Are Chaos (2020), One Assassination Under God – Chapter 1 (2024).