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Marilyn Manson Album Reviews | |
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Holy Wood: In The Shadow Of The...:
The impact of Marilyn Manson's subversive musical agenda has waned, and what's left is a provocative, talented artist writing affecting, powerful, and yes, controversial songs. Although Holy Wood is the third title of a trilogy that began with 1996's Antichrist Superstar, the album stands on its own. Rife with references to the Beatles and the Kennedys, and full of pop-culture barbs, Holy Wood is a musically diverse and powerful statement. The memorable sing-along "Disposable Teens" boasts the same kind of staccato, Teutonic, first-thrusting power introduced with "Beautiful People," while "Fight Song" is the Sex Pistols meets Blur by way of Nirvana. While a futuristic, nihilistic tint pervades Manson's work, passion is also prevalent, notably in the spooky acoustic number "A Place in the Dirt" and the brutal "Death Song." Like Marilyn Manson the man, Holy Wood is intelligent, dynamic, and multifaceted, with myriad charms that are evident to the tuned-in listener.
Mechanical Animals:
There's no question that Marilyn Manson's 1995 album Antichrist Superstar was a great-sounding record. It brooded, ripped, and clattered in all the right places, mixing industrial beats and samples with roaring heavy-metal riffs, echoing Goth keys, and the occasional tuneful pop vocal. But for all the sonic appeal, some of the songwriting wasn't too strong. No such problem on Manson's new record, Mechanical Animals, which forsakes some of the band's former grind in favor of dynamic glam rhythms and good old-fashioned melody. When the band tones down, as on the largely acoustic "Speed of Pain" and "Fundamentally Loathsome," Manson even sounds like a candidate for an Unplugged session. Most often, however, as on "Rock Is Dead," "User Friendly," and "The Dope Show," Mechanical Animals is a brash, decadent, and glittery display of self-indulgent hooks and melodramatic vocals that sounds like Aladdin Sane-era David Bowie and T. Rex at their most boisterous crossed with the more modern sounds of today's industrial nation.
Antichrist Superstar:
Marilyn Manson started out as a depraved, marginally talented group of freaks that played a caustic but undeveloped brand of metallic industrial noise. Then Trent Reznor stepped into the studio for seven months with the band, and Manson emerged with the most intense, visceral, mechanical metal album since The Downward Spiral. Antichrist Superstar is a horror-house of grisly atrocities that stains as indelibly as a bathful of warm blood. Brooding rhythms collide with corrosive samples and buzzsaw guitar riffs, while vocalist Marilyn croons irresistible melodies in the voice of a vagrant regurgitating broken light-bulb shards. Essential listening, regardless of how much input Reznor had.
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Marilyn Manson @ CanEHdian | |
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Smells Like Children :
Mostly a collection of remixed tracks from Portrait of an American Family and samples swiped from talk-radio dialogue, Smells Like Children is how Marilyn Manson passed the time prior to beginning work on Antichrist Superstar. Of note among the remixes is Tony Wiggins's acoustic country "White Trash" version of "Cake and Sodomy." This is really a keeper, though, for Manson's clever choice of covers, including an authentically creepy interpretation of Eurythmics' "Sweet Dreams" and the shot-in-the-arm he gives to Patti Smith's "outside of society" anthem, "Rock 'N' Roll Nigger." (Attention trivia buffs: Manson's unrestrained reworking of Howling Wolf's "I Put a Spell on You" was later included on the soundtrack to David Lynch's Lost Highway.)
The Last Tour On Earth :
Is a Marilyn Manson studio album like thunder without lightning? The name Manson is synonymous with stage theatrics, and studio albums aren't designed to capture such flashing, ephemeral excitement. That being the case, a live Marilyn Manson album is one step up from a studio disc and one notch down from a concert. This powerful 14-song, 70-minute set actually ends with one studio track, "Astonishing Panorama of the Endtimes" (also on the Celebrity Deathmatch album). Featuring such Manson concert favorites as "The Beautiful People," "The Dope Show," and the band's breakthrough cover of Eurythmics' "Sweet Dreams," The Last Tour on Earth is incendiary, expletive-strewn, and darkly irresistible. Manson is a commanding performer, though not one for the young or upright, as he spews on about LSD and sex with cops, performs "Antichrist Superstar," and has the audience chanting "We hate love, we love hate!" prior to a particularly raucous rendition of "Irresponsible Hate Anthem." That said, The Last Tour on Earth is an exhilarating outing from one of the '90s' boldest personalities.
Reviews Copyright Amazon.com 2000
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