Visionary. Evil incarnate. Icon. Depraved and baseless. A voice for the misunderstood? Or a makeup wearing heathen who spells doom for the youth?
Whether you’re an ardent admirer of his art, or a mild-mannered vicar who shudders at the mention of his name, you’ve probably heard an endless list of adjectives used to persuade or dissuade people from listening to his obscenity or study his acerbic social commentary. Marilyn Manson is a figure who has often been a bedfellow of controversy and asked many thought-provoking questions since the inception of his thirty-plus year career. But was the moral terror real? Was this one-man wave of satanic panic resurgence really all that shocking? Let’s take a look at some of the moments where The Reverend Manson really did feel genuinely dangerous.
The Antichrist Superstar music video (1996)
A lectern may seem a jarringly incongruous set piece at a rock show, but in 1996, The Dead to the World Tour was blazing its way across the globe and behind the apparently insensate podium, stood a pallid, ghoulish Pope; the newly coronated Antichrist Superstar.
This key image, alongside more furious live footage interspersed with crowd shots, constitutes the powerful and potent music video for Antichrist Superstar. The title track of Manson’s second album, lyrically, the song delves into the symbolic climax of the record’s concept, in which the protagonist reaches his ascendancy, and his apocalypse ensues. Satirising authoritarian and evangelical figures alike, in this video we see Manson’s prophetic words and ideas come to (forbidden) fruition, as he steps into the limelight to enact his role as the very demagogue, he predicted he would become.
There’s no wonder this video was shelved for a number of years; Bible pages are torn asunder and thrown into the air with Luciferian glee, avid crowds chant and punch through the Heavens with raised fists and Manson’s stage is augmented with red, white and black universal shock symbols, redolent of fascistic insignia – a very on the nose reference and piece of satire, but still taken all too seriously by his non-discerning detractors and fear mongers.
In these performances and scenes, Manson exudes a true aura of villainous invincibility and looks ready to take on the world with his legions of freaks. A consummate antihero of the alternative. This is proven by the intro, between thunderous power-chord stabs, the crowd explode into a canticle of yells and chants. The whole spectacle is highly suggestive of certain 20th century fascist rallies, although the type of people aligned with such beliefs would, without doubt, castigate and aim to crush the sentiments of passion, individuality and creativity which Manson evokes in this terrifying but beautiful display of self-power and empowerment for others. Manson also shares directorial duties with cult-horror royalty E. Elias Merhige here, a fellow Nietzsche student and the mind behind the chillingly brilliant Manson favourite, Begotten (1989)
With this show of his prowess for invoking the ironic and orchestrating such a display of counterculture strength and unity, we can almost sympathise with the religious zealots and worrisome citizens who famously flocked to picket the tours “Satanic death metal events”. We can still today hear Manson’s sardonic cackle as they shake their sanctimonious fists.
Watch Full Video Here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPQD7KxutcM
The cover art for Holy Wood (In the Shadow of the Valley of Death) (2000)
As history has forever proven, even before the age of television, when a tragedy befalls a nation and ultimately hits the news, it can become a feeding frenzy for the self-righteous and those with cozened concern. The closing of the last century saw Manson navigating his noisy vessel through the tumultuous waves of, arguably, his darkest chapter…the aftermath and fallout of the 1999 Columbine shooting. But navigate it he did, with a classy yet katana-sharp wit, in the form of 2000’s Holy Wood (In the Valley of the Shadow of Death).
Offering a twin-counterattack of newly invigorated song writing and scathing lyrical commentary, the album served as a mirror for a culture and nation that was once again pointing the finger at its favourite scapegoat with more vim and venom than ever. This calculated move on Manson’s behalf was also neatly portrayed via the aforementioned album’s cover art.
Manson has gone on record with many pithy analyses and observations regarding the image of the crucifixion. These include questioning whether a crucifix is actually just an icon of murder and violence, glorifying the charnel rather than the divine and virtuous. Is the seemingly primordial image the most widespread sex symbol that happens to innocuously hang in the homes of countless innocent families worldwide? Or is it the original merchandise piece and Jesus the first rockstar? As a master of dichotomies, it’s clear to see Manson’s thought process in what was to follow. The graphic and elegant art for Holy Wood… is an iconoclastic chiaroscuro, depicting the frontman as a martyred, Christlike figure, stigmata to boot and jaw gruesomely removed by censorship.
This blasphemous and ballsy move encompasses this entire era for the band and the eponymous singer, where he, yet again, is weaponising symbology to highlight hypocrisy. Manson, much like Christ, is someone who spoke up in the face of tyranny or questioned the status quo, a unique individual whose ideas were deemed radical and was subsequently silenced and killed for his troubles. His (Manson’s) conservative critics and those who derided him simply failed to notice the glaring equivalent to their own paragon of perfection and mildness that they themselves had forced Manson to become. The Beatles once (in)famously claimed to be bigger than Jesus, but Manson is seen here, laid bare as the very murdered Christ figure he felt America had cast him to be.
Listen To Holy Wood Here:
https://open.spotify.com/album/3stFLIWyYH4a8u0bdxDopt?si=a26CF7R8QV2wClmWykS-uA
Apple of Sodom (1997)
Following his rise to provocative prominence, Manson’s path to becoming a breathing “gesamtkunstwerk” was being paved with vicious pace. One of his notable forays onto the screen, was a cameo appearance in the late and beloved David Lynch’s Lost Highway (1997), in which we see him as a snuff film “star”, alongside musical accomplice and fellow androgyne Twiggy Ramirez. But that tidbit of macabre trivia regarding Manson’s neophytic efforts as a thespian is not why we’re here…
One of two songs the band provided for the film’s truly awesome soundtrack, Apple of Sodom is the perfect fit for a waking nightmare and hallucinatory masterpiece like Lost Highway. Lyrically, it deals with obsession, decay and all things forbidden, with of course, allegories to the biblical.
Following a ghostly intro, hypnotic whispers, disquieting croons and strangled screams build a haunted playground of vocal approach, a playful, sinister motif in the midsection gives way to Manson utilising his falsetto to voice a goosebump inducing nursery-rhyme-like melody. This authentically disturbing composition is a far cry from the campy, cartoonish days of debut Portrait of an American Family, soaked in ambience and Lynchian soundscape with menacing basslines that feel like they’re coming to life, warping around the metallic clangs and subtle but wicked guitars. The song provides an unnerving listen for anyone, with lyrics as poetic as they are threatening, such as echoes of “I’m dying, I hope you’re dying too”. With this particularly brooding piece of Manson’s oeuvre, we’re left to ponder if maybe he is as evil and frightening as the mainstream would have you think…
Watch Full Video Here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xklc0yQqnnw
Or Here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzgkwXjWuEg
The (s)AINT music video (2004)
Directed by Asia Argento, daughter of the famed giallo titan Dario Argento, this music video from 2003’s The Golden Age of Grotesque is packed with enough debauchery and sin to make the Marquis de Sade squirm.
Much less philosophically subversive than his prior works, (s)AINT reveals to us that Manson can also be the more Epicurean, sex, drugs and rock n roll bad guy too. Here, we have every rockstar trope made flesh. The result is something that plays out as if Gaspar Noé were to be having a dream influenced by Lucifer Valentine. In true Mansonian style, the music video pushes boundaries and strives to include every shocking behaviour that America’s parents had feared Manson was all about, but still, it kept an artistic edge even in the frontman’s more stripped back, indulgent epoch. The video is lude, bloody, deviously ungodly and certainly not for the faint of heart – and also, still has me frantically scratching my head at the fact I could watch it on YouTube.
Similar to how Apple of Sodom may prove the people who reduce Manson’s entire catalogue to scary sounds and evil music, this video may lead the more casual listener/viewer to think he lives this sort of profane, bacchanal life on a daily basis and just might confirm the parent’s worst fears…
Watch Full Video Here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anEMXOyCCqc
Raise the Red Flag (2024)
Extremity is sometimes just a question of polarities. The ability to evoke and provoke are both tools that can be used to combine and contrast. Tell me, what’s more polarising than being a larger (or louder) than life figure, Christendom’s very embodiment of the apocalypse, to then appear all too human and, perhaps sometimes, too vulnerable. Manson has been known to occasionally drop the high concepts and golden-grilled-grimaces, to set aside the LaVey and Milton and don his human form.
Where in the past, he’s opened up (“like a birthday present”) on divisive albums such as Eat Me, Drink Me (2007) or it’s follow-up The High End of Low (2009), sometimes this “dark heart worn on a tattered sleeve” approach, can strike an authentic emotive cord.
The recent chaos and comeback of Manson’s career really isn’t new news, but this time, his will and resolve was well and truly tested by being put through the ringer of public opinion in a new era of outrage and censorship. Many of his long-term followers couldn’t decide if his approach to his art, legal battles and life in general, had become subdued and in fact signalled defeat, or if he was merely once more biding his time.
As always seems to be the case, the latter was true, and Manson ended 2024 with a strong statement with his aptly titled return album, One Assassination Under God – Chapter 1. Most vociferously of all, was the record’s sophomore single, Raise the Red Flag.
This is Manson reaping his astute revenge and, with him now closer to 60 than 50, it’s amazing to witness that he hasn’t lost any of that hellfire that burns in the chthonic recesses of his creative soul. Doubters, naysayers and blackballers are laid to waste here, the song is a nod from the God of Fuck, acknowledging those who recently sought to destroy him and spitting back at their efforts.
The reason for my earlier mention of his vulnerability, is that this is what brings the whole thing together and reminds us that Manson is still a force to be reckoned with. His use of the term “bullies” drums up feelings of him back in the “Wormboy” phase of Antichrist Superstar and refusing to be pushed around or go quietly, it showcases this vulnerability, maybe even fear, and makes it all the more admirable that he has still decided to plant his red flag in defiance.
In an age still abundant with “Cancel Culture”, we need our provocative and incendiary creatives more than ever! This is Manson admitting that he is in fact, not a satanic overlord or untouchable rockstar, he is a human being, just another animal, and nothing is more dangerous than a cornered animal.
Watch Full Video Here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckIQOTduNbI
By Tye Jozefowicz
https://linktr.ee/inheritornoise
Photographer Credit: Perou
https://www.instagram.com/mrperou/
