An album with two excellent songs - the title track plus a song titled with the spades symbol - and, besides them and some other good moments, a big shitload of faceless noise. I didn’t like the most of Mechanical Animals either, but, again, there was some excellent tracks on it. Three, to be exact: The Speed Of Pain, The Last Day On Earth and Coma White. And there’s similarity in those good-quality songs on both albums: They’re slow, heavy, melodious, tormenting; and the emphasis is on the songs themselves instead of electric-sounding noises. The rest of both albums is mostly just uninteresting raw substance to me.

But I still admire Marilyn Manson. I’ve thought that his similarity with Iggy Pop has been pretty much overlooked. Their voices have same kind of low charisma in them; some of Manson’s hard & chaotic tracks even remind me of The Stooges. And they’re both icons just the way only an American artist can become an icon. The Americans give individual human beings glow that’s not possible anywhere else, starting probably from Billy The Kid or something. Danger is sexy, I guess that’s the name of the game. And Iggy and Manson [and Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Alice Cooper, Kurt Cobain and countless others] are dangerous for sure, Billy The Kid’s bastard sons.
In that light, what makes me laugh especially bitterly is the sticker on the album cover, which among others advertises a song called "This Is The New S**t". I guess they like their danger muffled, after all. This just reminds me of a 1988 song by one of the major bands in Finland, called Haista vittu, where the "vittu" means "cunt". And there it then stood in the national TV and newspapers and everywhere it was listed or reviewed or its video shown. Haista vittu. What's so menacing in dirty words, when they're everywhere anyway? What's the difference between "s**t" and "shit"?

Marilyn Manson has artistic vision, and I respect that he’s fulfilling it, although I don’t like it much. I guess I’d like him to do just the kind of stuff I enjoy by him the most, melodic, fateful hard rock like those few songs. But when he doesn’t, fine by me. The album has two absolute highlights plus an enchanting cover of the old fav Tainted Love. That’s enough for me this time.

Neon Nights / June 2003

back

01. This Is The New Sh*t
02. mOBSCENE
03. Doll-Dagga Buzz-Buzz Ziggety-Zag
04. Use Your Fist And Not Your Mouth
05. The Golden Age Of Grotesque
06. (s)AINT
07. Ka-Boom Ka-Boom
08. Slutgarden
09. Spade
10. Para-noir
11. The Bright Young Things
12. Better Of Two Evils
13. Vodevil
14. Obsequy (The Death Of Art)