Marilyn Manson - An Antichrist in the Age of Mtv

I dedicate this book to Hugh and Barb Warner. May God forgive them for bringing me into this world.

Brian Warner's autobiography, known under the stage name Marilyn Manson, the most significant media anti-hero to step into the spotlight of the music business in the Nineties, opens with this dedication to his parents. A single line that says all there is to say about Marilyn Manson.
His is a textbook case of a “character” who, even if genuinely unsettling at first, was forced by success (especially the kind built on scandal) to turn into a harmless mask, the ultimate and most perfect expression of show-business's bad taste and hypocrisy.
His is also a career whose significant aspects unfold 99% outside of any musical discourse: it's a career built on shock and artfully staged provocations, on a grotesque theatre that is more kitsch and gory, borrowed from past provocateurs who were far more transgressive and original than him (above all Alice Cooper and Ozzy Osbourne, but also the late Rozz Williams). Provocations calculated to perfection, on one hand to scandalize the masses of narrow-minded, bigoted, faux-moralist types and the like (scandal on everyone's lips, scandal to discuss on TV talk shows = plenty of useful publicity), and on the other to come across as a revelation to hordes of kids numbed by Mtv, Beavis & Butthead-style, who by electing Manson as their idol finally have an accessible model of "bad", "transgressive" and "dangerous", ready to indulge every one of their expectations. Trivialities such as having himself crucified and tearing up pages of the Bible on stage (all already done by Rozz Williams, thank you very much), and more generally his concerts steeped in obscenity (though his is mostly a theatre of provocation that never got past the anal stage), his songs built on the crudest, easiest brutality and, in direct proportion to his growing success, increasingly false and empty.

Manson is the last rock-shocker to land on the scene: but he is far from being the most original, or the most dangerous or transgressive. At best he can rightly be considered one of the shrewdest, cleverest and most commercially savvy. If Marilyn Manson deserves any credit, it's almost exclusively on the media front: not anymore today, but at least from the late Nineties onward his skill in managing his image is undeniable (a skill closer, though, to that of Madonna than to that of David Bowie), through carefully calculated changes of look, appearances and public statements. Above all, his cunning in skillfully riding every slightest opportunity for scandal that might even remotely involve him is undeniable.
Musically he has written pages of minimal, if not zero, importance. Within his genre he's gotten a few good songs right, and little more. But to become the mainstream's public enemy number one in the era of the Spice Girls first and Britney Spears later, it stands to reason that the musical side of things is by far the least important.

Portrait of an American Family

Brian Warner was born in Canton, Ohio, in 1969. His is the typical average family from the bleak American provinces: the only child of Barbara, a nurse, and Hugh Warner, a salesman and Vietnam veteran, absent, irritable, violent. Naturally, young Brian attends a repressive religious school, where he naturally develops a sense of disgust and rebellion toward that kind of upbringing; naturally his grey family is also not without hidden perversions (embodied in the figure of his grandfather), to which the autobiography devotes some hilarious pages.
In the early Eighties, however, the little family moves to Tampa Bay, Florida. It's here that Brian starts getting into music: hard rock and glam-rock top his list of favourites.

At 18 he starts contributing to a music magazine, and in 1989 he forms his first band, Spooky Kids. By his side is his friend, guitarist Scott Mitchell. Before long the band's name changes to Marilyn Manson & The Spooky Kids. Warner renames himself, precisely, Marilyn Manson (which was the name of the protagonist of one of his school stories) and invites his bandmates to do the same: that is, to rename themselves with the name of a more or less famous showgirl, actress or sex symbol, paired with the surname of a serial killer. A fun little game that results in this line-up: Brian Warner/Marilyn Manson (vocals), Scott Mitchell/Daisy Berkowitz (guitar), Brad Stewart/Gidget Gein (bass) and Stephen Gregory/Madonna-Wayne Gacy (keyboards and drum machine).
The sound has an industrial-metal imprint, but the group makes a name for itself through its terrifying concerts, more than through its early demos. Manson begins crafting his mask, built around extreme, aggressive make-up. The band's name starts circulating in the Florida underground scene, already fertile breeding ground for some of the most gruesome bands made in the USA.

The turning point, however, comes in 1992: both because of the addition to the group of drummer Fred Streithorse/Sara Lee Lucas, and above all because the Mansons are contacted by one of the most respected figures on the American industrial-rock scene, Trent Reznor (Nine Inch Nails), who signs the band to his label, Nothing Records.
Having replaced the bassist with new arrival Twiggy Ramirez (real name Jeordie Osborne White), in 1993 Marilyn Manson and co. open for Nine Inch Nails on tour and get ready to record their debut album, released the following year: Portrait of an American Family (1994).
On his first real encounter with the mass audience, Mr. Manson unleashes an arsenal of sonic and verbal assaults enough to make more than one thrash-metal band or the like turn pale: tracks like “Cake And Sodomy”, in particular, cause quite a stir. Musically, though, the album (skillfully produced by Trent Reznor himself) says very little: amid the hammering rhythms and distortions, it's not so much the bland electronic disturbances but rather Manson's slimy, malicious voice that hits the mark. Beyond that, the only tracks that have anything to say musically are “My Monkey” and, with even less originality, “Lunchbox”.

Antichrist or Superstar?

The album achieves solid success, but in 1994 Manson makes headlines for very different reasons: that year he is ordained a "Reverend" by an increasingly addled Anton LaVey, founder of the Church of Satan. People start taking real notice of this strange character: this androgynous, anorexic, unsettling being who begins hanging out with the "right" people and appearing on the "right" covers. Credit must go to Brian for having built his persona down to the last detail, with far-sighted skill. His is the perfect physique du role to sustain the part of a "post-human" being (as he himself would describe it in one of his songs), shaped by ever more excessive looks and make-up.
In 1995, following the practice typical of Nine Inch Nails, Marilyn Manson also release their "companion" record to the main album: Smells Like Children (1995) contains remixes of some tracks from the debut album plus a few covers. One that stands out is the cover of "Sweet Dreams", the legendary hit by Eurythmics, rendered in a repellent version, accompanied by an even more sordid video, tailor-made, of course, for heavy rotation on MTV.

The time is thus ripe for the "big bang", which duly arrives in 1996, thanks to the manifesto album Antichrist Superstar and its relentless singles "Tourniquet" and, above all, "The Beautiful People" (also thanks to the accompanying videos, made by the brilliant Floria Sigismondi, in which Manson undergoes genuine make-up tours de force). The album is branded by Trent Reznor's arrangements (who here appears as a musician as well as producer), on tracks like "Minute Of Decay", "Irresponsible Hate Anthem", "Wormboy" and the surprising funeral-paced closer "The Man That You Fear". A long and varied album, essentially decidedly mature, Antichrist Superstar is above all Manson's first public act of self-celebration, having sniffed out major success and determined not to let it slip away. Success duly arrives: buoyed by the media drumbeat surrounding the character, the album debuts at number 3 on the American chart, the standard-bearers of good taste and morality shudder before this monster born and raised in their own midst, around whom a sort of collective mania seems to be taking shape: Manson is on everyone's lips, for better or worse, but it doesn't matter. The Antichrist is merely the means: his end is to be the Superstar, and he has succeeded.
The magazine covers pile up (for a "superstar", appearing on the cover of Rolling Stone is an essential rite of passage, and Mr. Manson certainly doesn't escape this unwritten law of American showbiz), the controversies over his lyrics and attitudes pile up (over time Manson will routinely be dragged into the conversation whenever young people commit atrocious and inexplicable crimes, especially those with a "satanic" slant), the articles and books questioning the Marilyn Manson "phenomenon" pile up, but so do the appearances at every ritual MTV event, the flirtations and spicy gossip pile up, and above all the money piles up, along with droves of young fans, and, to top it all off, comes the best-selling autobiography. Meanwhile, guitarist Berkowitz (the true soul of the band's harsh early sound) leaves, replaced by a more anonymous figure, John 5.

The Slow Decline

At this point Manson chooses to step out of the shadow of his mentor, Trent Reznor (even though, by now, it was Reznor who was being eclipsed in the eyes of the general public by his protégé). The professional split between the two is not exactly amicable, though reconciliation isn't long in coming, made official by the hilarious NIN video for "Starfuckers Inc.", directed by Manson himself and performed with sarcasm by both stars. Meanwhile, secure in his "Superstar" status, Manson can comfortably risk "dancing alone" on the new album Mechanical Animals, built around a more bombastic and decidedly less aggressive sound (the producer is Michael Beinhorn, who had already worked with Soundgarden): for his part, Warner reinvents himself as a sexless alien character, manipulated and imprisoned by the system and the business inside a gilded cage (the whole thing is openly inspired by David Bowie, to the point that many describe this album as a "glam" record). "The Dope Show", the first single and first hit from the album, is also the manifesto track of the concept ("they love you when you are on the covers, when you're not than they love another"): a concept that criticizes success, television, the mass media, and the star system in general, while trying to gain even more success and integrate even further into that very star system. A classic. Underlying hypocrisy aside, Manson still manages to come up with well-crafted tracks like the dramatic "Coma White" and the already mentioned "Posthuman", the true manifesto of his entire "art". But the real triumph is the unleashed "Rock Is Dead", which would soon also top the soundtrack of the cult movie "The Matrix".

But the character starts to show cracks: like every product that chooses MTV as the ultimate purpose of its existence, the moment also comes for Mr. Manson when it's no longer possible to keep attention on himself alive, once those two or three lucky years have passed. He seems above all to have run out of ideas for how to shock anyone further - not so much his fans as his detractors (per the formula: the more people bad-mouth you, the more people will know your name). The trouble is that the initial terror and rejection have now given way to indifferent tolerance. The nightmare of every character like him (one could say the nightmare of every fleeting pop star, because that is, paradoxically, what Manson is turning into): the indifference of the masses.
All this, by reaction, leads to the most honest album of his career, perhaps the only one where Manson truly believes in what he's doing and what he's singing: Holy Wood (In The Shadow Of The Valley Of Death) (Interscope, 2000), a monumental concept album spread across 19 tracks, is for the first time written, produced, arranged and largely performed by Manson alone (helped in the studio by producer David Sardy). It's also the closing chapter of an informal trilogy that began with Antichrist. On the cover, Brian has himself portrayed crucified (ugh!), as if to say his earthly parable has reached a sad conclusion, misunderstood and disowned by the people: long live modesty, no doubt. Fortunately the record is the angriest (though never naively brutal) and most forceful of his career, built on concise, powerful tracks like "The Fight Song" and gothic tragedies like the majestic "The Nobodies". Granted, there's too much on the stove for Mr. Manson's limited talent and limited imagination (compared to any Trent Reznor track, even his best song here is really, really slight), but the impact is nonetheless broader in scope than on any other of his records. For the first time, a Marilyn Manson album genuinely earns, at least in part, some admiration. Perhaps for the first time, Brian Warner cares more about being a musician than a superstar.

But it's a flash in the pan: the new millennium sees Manson turn into something terribly pathetic, a decadent pop star unable to revitalize his own image. The sad cover of the Soft Cell classic "Tainted Love" (2001) is tellingly made as the soundtrack to a teen movie. And since in the world of MTV pop the most important thing is the video, Manson - whose videos used to be almost always top-notch - starts sinking lower and lower on this front too, edging toward levels of vulgarity worthy of hip-hop trash. In any case, what's left of his band falls apart with the departure of bassist Twiggy Ramirez (who, it must be said, is one of the best rock bassists of recent years), who moves first to A Perfect Circle and then to Nine Inch Nails.
Working on a new album, Manson brings in German musician Tim Skold (ex-KMFDM), who takes on almost the entire job of production, arrangement and instrumental performance. What turns up on The Golden Age Of Grotesque (Interscope, 2003), however, is a tired Manson, without a shred of an idea, spinning in circles, unsure how to breathe new life into a mask now as empty as his music. Manson tries to reinvent his career by drawing on burlesque, no doubt influenced by his heavily publicized relationship with model Dita Von Teese. Which says it all about the musical worth of an album that's all surface, in reality inconsistent, repetitive, utterly toothless. The fans, however, remain loyal and allow the record to achieve solid success. MTV still loves its eccentric golden goose and keeps handing him deluxe guest spots and hosting gigs at special events (most recently: the "Icons" show honoring the Cure). Artistically, though, Manson seems dead and buried. The little he had to say, he's already said in a hurry. All that's left now is an empty mask that no longer scares anyone.

Recently Manson has released his first greatest hits collection, tellingly titled Lest We Forget (Interscope, 2004), featuring a cover of "Personal Jesus" by Depeche Mode trying - in vain - to offer some faint sign of life.

In 2007, the return with Eat Me, Drink Me settles at a mediocre but at least once again respectable level: Manson seems to have become aware of the flops of recent years and takes a healthy dip in modesty, rediscovering at least a minimum of motivation and inspiration. Between predictable tracks and others of decent craftsmanship, it's perhaps his most gothic and baroque record. Enjoyable and forgettable.
In 2009 comes The High End Of Low, a record showing a shift in the Mansonian sound toward more conventional, less deconstructed rock structures. An album that runs on an absent, detached personality, revealing itself as a desk job. An attempt to buy time to reflect on his own path.

A path now steered toward less industrial-metal, less mutant stylistic traits, in which the elements of Brian Warner's grotesque and bizarre aesthetic are used as mere sleight-of-hand tricks: such is the fate of the most recent Born Villain, a work with a stable identity that nonetheless feels blurred in places. Capable of gathering renewed emotional energy, but scattered across a plastic world that has fallen behind even its own nightmares.
The opening "Hey, Cruel World" and "No Reflection" start off with desperate fury, mixed with droning, sickly vocals, without piercing the surface of the mirror facing the listener. Tight, crooked rhythms give way to a more measured gait, before dissolving into the mechanical introspection of "Pistol Whipped", amid the noise of gears and deformed whispers. The following "Overneath The Patch Of Misery" proudly wears its clear déjà vu, recalling the surgical dances of "Beautiful People", while keeping a lower, more reflective and disillusioned profile, before the final charge. This is where the record's second half begins. The pained rock of "Slo-Mo-Tion", where muted guitars and a limping drumbeat let Manson's swampy voice drip through, gives way to the interesting "Gardner". Here, in a hypothetical bastardized middle ground between Nick Cave and Killing Joke, a nocturnal scream with discreet steps is created: a slow spoken word piece that holds yet another explosion of rage, this time embellished with a murderous elegance.
A similar elegance pervades the more lyrical "Children Of Chain", the most electronic track on the record. Melancholy and anguished, it implodes on itself again and again. An intimacy that Warner also manages to condense in the title track, a semi-acoustic gem, only to then burn it away in the stoner rawness of "Lay Down Your Goddamn Arms" and the metal-rock steroids of "Murderers Are Getting Prettier Every Day". Quite different is the closing pairing: "Breaking The Same Old Ground"/"You're So Vain" (the latter a cover of the Carly Simon classic). Even though born from an evident recycling of ideas - a dreamy, childlike music box opening an acid testimony of pain, and an overall somewhat flat mutant rock - the two tracks close Manson's new work effectively.
Born Villain is a record that juxtaposes various clashing elements, immersed in an orgiastic world of grotesque, antisocial and misanthropic traits. The fundamental problem is the absence of a true unifying aesthetic that could give fresh, vital synthesis to a project that has run dry in its most expressive aspect.

The new chapter in the Brian Warner saga is The Pale Emperor (2015), a record that serves as sustenance to the fallen emperor's anti-MTV disciples, who still live and fight. Essentially a concept album about power and exploitation, it features a decent slap of violence ("Deep Six"), a handful of late-grunge-style ballads (including the grandiose, melodramatic "Odds Of Even" and "Slave Only Dreams To Be King"), and a few parodies of his old glam-industrial assaults, now made jovial and danceable ("The Mephistopheles Of Los Angeles"). This new reinvention is essentially the product of newcomer Tyler Bates, already a veteran of film scores of every kind, who clinically keeps the creature alive without going beyond its most familiar sound.
"Sons of Anarchy" proved to be the catalyst. In the final season of the celebrated TV series - where music plays a fundamental role, including for the cast - Marilyn Manson played Ron Tully, leader of the Aryan Brotherhood behind bars. That important experience on set allowed him to meet producer and country-rock songwriter Shooter Jennings, with whom he was supposed to write a track for the show. The project never came to fruition, but the two stayed in touch. Gradually, between mutual admiration and the desire to collaborate, fitted in around their respective commitments, they first composed a version of Giorgio Moroder's "Cat People" for the tribute album "Countach (For Giorgio)", and then, in early January 2020, the more substantial fruit of that encounter (its release delayed to September due to Covid-19): We Are Chaos, a new collection of unreleased material produced by both, whose artwork stems from the singer's exhausting painting sessions during lockdown.

Now that he's no longer the antichrist superstar, Brian Hugh Warner can focus more fully on creativity and music. After a string of records that weren't exactly essential, the Reverend transformed himself into a Pale Emperor and managed, through clattering blues-rock, to restore some meaning to a career that found stability with Heaven Upside Down. The presence of a name like Shooter Jennings behind the controls suggested an important shift in sound, considering that in October 2019 Manson had released his own rendition of the famous "God's Gonna Cut You Down" (also known as "Run On"), a cornerstone of American folk also sung by Johnny Cash. Even more disorienting was the choice of the first, self-titled single: with that acoustic guitar passage and its non-aggressive tone, balanced between pain and consolation, Warner once again confirms himself as a spokesman for outsiders and the misunderstood, also reflecting on his own mental balance, recording an unprecedented yet intense, macabre ballad ("But once you've inhaled death/ Everything else is perfume").
In fact, listening to the album as a whole reveals a balance between the usual Manson and unprecedented, softer passages. After the initial statement of intent, "Red Black And Blue" kicks under the pulse of convulsive percussion and scratching guitars, exploding into a powerful chorus. Equally well placed among the classic Manson moments are "Infinite Darkness" and "Keep My Head Together". But then I imagine the Reverend's most hardcore fans stopping the playback the moment the female choirs of "Paint You With My Love" kick in. A gait too saccharine even for the singer, who toward the end of the track decides to swerve and indulge in one of his distorted screams. This is precisely where the main flaw of We Are Chaos (2020) lies: not having committed to a clear direction and remaining stuck halfway across the ford. It would have been preferable for Warner to take a real gamble, since at this point in his career he has nothing left to lose. Also because a more acoustic, singer-songwriter form would have blended beautifully with the dark, reflective lyrics of the record: a constant meditation on time, loneliness, death. A case in point is the lovely "Half-way & One Step forward", with its piano and sinuous melodic shell, where Cohen is quoted: “Ring all the bells you can ring/ There’s a crack in everything/ That’s how the sunlight gets in”.
There's no shortage of reflections against the Church, gothic imagery ("Don't Chase The Dead") and the satanism-for-dummies of "Perfume". And on the image of "Broken Needle" (a record needle digging through the grooves of a forgotten album), a good but indecisive record comes to a close. Perhaps the time has come for Marilyn Manson to finally take the risk.

Four years later, Manson returns to the scene with One Assassination Under God – Chapter 1 (2024). After the interlude marked by Shooter Jennings, Tyler Bates returns behind the controls. The novelty is the release under Nuclear Blast, a label that has probably set up a return of the good old iconoclastic, rocking Manson. As hinted by the three solid singles: "As Sick As The Secrets Within" (which, by the end of the full album, confirms itself as the best track), "Raise The Red Flag" and "Sacrilegious".
The dirty, heavy instrumental work is tempered by crowd-pleasing synths and impactful choruses, but overall the tracks are sturdy and tense, and the forty minutes fly by as they should, closing however with the acoustic opening of "Sacrifice Of The Mass", the only leftover trace of its predecessor. The glorious past echoes in "No Funeral Without Applause", while "Nod If You Understand" could have - in the vein of "Revelation #12" and "We Know Where You Fucking Live" - opened Heaven Upside Down. The Reverend's voice - who on the cover places yet another one of his paintings - holds up well, as shown on the impactful opener "One Assassination Under God".

As announced, One Assassination Under God – Chapter 2 comes out in August 2026. A release that aligns coherently with the first part, starting from the cover: a new self-portrait canvas by the Reverend, who is no stranger to placing his paintings on album covers. The second part - again on Nuclear Blast - doesn't shake things up and continues the "easy win" secured by Chapter 1, once again overseen by trusted collaborator Tyler Bates behind the controls. For Manson, we're at a point in his career where, if he can't or won't do something new and meaningful, he at least picks the best from the past. "Unalive" is a massive opener, "Lucifer's Teardrop" echoes the metallic guitars of "Pale Emperor", specifically "Deep Six". "Front Toward Enemy" tries to blend the unforgettable fury of "The Fight Song" with the sound of "Antichrist Superstar". By the end of the listen, the most successful and engaging passages are the more melodic ones, further from the Reverend's metal roots, who has not been averse in the past to venturing into different landscapes. See "Third Day Of A Seven Day Binge", the grim folk of "We Are Chaos", and catchy choruses, as in "The Flowers of Evil" on "Born Villain". The granite-like, funereal bass of "Don't Answer The Door", the dark/goth atmosphere of "All The Vilest Things", where the synth touch works, unlike the first single "Exit Wound", unable to stand comparison with "As Sick as the Secrets Within" from Chapter 1. The refrain of "None of the Suns" also stands out, while the rest of the record does its job thanks to driving rhythms and hard sounds. With proto-satanism diluted into sporadic appearances, the thematic core here too is the return after the delicate years spent in court due to the alleged abuse accusations filed from 2021 onward and closed for lack of evidence by the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department last year. The tone is that of someone who has left the worst behind. Closing the story in fitting fashion is "Enantiomorph", preceded by its recorded intro.

One Assassination Under God – Chapter 2 is part of Manson's new life - both artistic and personal. Nothing that can match the glories of the past, but a successful update paired with a newfound vitality - physical and vocal - including live. However many times the assassination under God has played out on stage - twice, in this case - the only one who hasn't fallen is Brian Hugh Warner.

Contributions by Michele Guerrini (“Born Villain”), Michele Saran (“The Pale Emperor”), Alessio Belli (“We Are Chaos”, “One Assassination Under God – Chapter 1 & 2”)

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