Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Marilyn Manson
Label: Cooking Vinyl
Released: 2012
Length: 63:25
Rating: 4.3/5
What would the world be without Marilyn Manson? And the other way around: what would Marilyn Manson be without the world? Barren, very barren. So what has this brilliant artist dreamed up on his new, eighth studio album? He’s aimed his boundlessly sparkling sarcasm at a kind of shock therapy meant to wake humanity up, deliberately stirring negative feelings in us so he can hold up a mirror. That’s his mission. And damn if he doesn’t deliver on it.
The guy who has spent his whole musical career milking countless images of the antichrist, the true anti-hero, everything we run from, try to hide from and usually, in our quasi-moralistic way, convince ourselves with a »well, I’m certainly not like that, right?« has now put on the mask of the »born villain« – which reads as banal and almost trivial when you translate it from Slovenian. But there’s that magical word in between: »however.« With Born Villain, Manson once again casts himself as the one who walks his own path, refuses to bow, and does whatever he does of his own free will, wholeheartedly and with confidence, because Manson knows that if he wavers along the way, »Big Brother’s machinery« will destroy him. Of course, I’m planting a few »roses« here. There are no real rebels, otherwise the world would be a nicer place than it is. A just one, that is. Well, in fiction anything is possible. Whether this is Manson’s fiction, once again slyly placed through the prism of musical art, doesn’t matter at all. The artist simply delivers again with staggeringly shocking conviction. Over and over and over.
Lyrically, Manson turns to himself again, while at the same time nailing human stupidity, depravity and duplicity to the cross (Children of Kain), which was always his big delicacy and specialty. Nothing new, then, but still profound, intelligent, direct in the verses once more, wrapped in metaphor yet with no concealment. You can feel, though, that Manson keeps maturing artistically. In vocal expression, for instance, he’s put extra emphasis this time on repeating a chosen line, which he dictates in different varieties of word placement within that same line. So even though it’s the same line, when he leads it through a chosen motif (a guitar phrase, a programmed sonic loop, etc…) via distorted screaming, the obsession of shrieking excess, or just toys around with whispered recitals, that very same line lands differently every time.
Twiggy Ramirez’s return in 2009 on the album »The High End Of Low« was definitely more than welcome for the creative reach and persuasiveness of Marilyn Manson. So the creative core triangle of Manson-Ramirez-Vrenna is obviously more than a happy fit, even essential, and let’s hope new departures from the lineup don’t break it up in the future. »Born Villain« is, once again, more punkishly tight-lipped and ominously rumbling, in fact after »Holy Wood« perhaps precisely the album that should have followed it, and critics definitely wouldn’t have taken issue with the successor »The Golden Age Of Grotesque«. Vrenna is a master of layering programmed loops, a man who works from the background and contributes the bulk of what we understand as the »industrial« in Marilyn Manson’s art expression. This time too he did his job with great distinction, but it’s only the pairing with Twiggy Ramirez’s bizarre, riff-driven thrill-seeking, and of course the utterly unique vocal delivery of Manson himself, that forms the bare minimum, call it the common denominator, that justifies the artistic reach of Marilyn Manson at all.
The fact is that Manson remains an entertainer with »Born Villa«, but times have changed and the eighth album no longer feels so shocking, intriguing, provocative or blasphemous on release. It’s 2012 and violence follows us at every step. There’s never been as much of it as there is now, even in so-called times of »peace.« Young people are growing thick skins; violence is practically becoming one of the personality costumes of the youth, something totally taken for granted, an everyday thing, like putting on underpants.
Minimalism is the sacred ruler on the new Marilyn Manson album too. Short, simple, frankly banal tricks are once again the core of the arrangements. The vocal, almost oversaturated with distortion, in other words overproduced, sounds sharp again, irritating with its deliberate mangledness, haughty, desperate and relentlessly accusing. Then there are those narratives with deep, muffled breathing that come across as downright erotic – a tried-and-tested trick with which Manson also deepens the gothic side of his musical sermon. He combines that now and then with eruptions of massive screaming (Disengaged, Hey Cruel World, Overneath The Path Of Misery, Murderers Are Getting Prettier Every Day). This is his playground and there’s no retreat from it. He commands it fully and strides across it with full-blooded confidence, which is why he stays so shockingly attractive in his »reality.« Amid all this there’s plenty of room for catchy melodies, which superbly balance the bizarre expression of this album. The choruses in The Flowers Of Evil, Slo-Mo-tion, The Gardener, Pistol Whipped and No Reflection prove that Marilyn Manson has a full-blooded feel for pouring just the right dose of melody, one that’s music to the ears and flirts brilliantly with the mocking alternative theater of vampiric swagger, which would otherwise drown in its own abundance of manufactured gloom and the apocalyptic feeling of hopelessly sinking into a bottomless pit. The sharp insight of Marilyn Manson’s musical talents is also shown by the excellent cover of seventies hit-maker Carly Simon’s You’re So Vain. This track is special for another reason, too. The guitars and even the drums on it are played by none other than the enlightened pirate of the Caribbean himself, Johnny Depp. The version is wonderfully done; Johnny handled the job with total confidence.
Twiggy Ramirez brought some outstanding riffs, especially the Sabbath-style warped Lay Down Your Goddamn Arms. Ramirez fully capitalizes on a refined knack for implanting bizarre riff tricks that are, as you’d expect, sparse in tonality, but so wisely measured and tempo’d in their placement that they hit their expressive peak every time (proof of that is the use of his guitar in Pistol Whipped). This eccentric mix of metal, industrial and a gothic touch, drizzled with a theatrically vampiric glam/sleaze sheen, hasn’t worked this well in ages, and it’s back on »Born Villain.« The peak of the artistic reach of Marilyn Manson’s modern-day sonic terrorism is undoubtedly captured by the utterly bestial Murderers Are Getting Prettier Every Day, where rhythmic loops go head to head with the rabid drumming savagery of Chris Vrenna. The arrangement of the rhythmic structures adds significant weight to the apocalyptic vision of this track and is, really, the finale before the finale. From here on, the album calms down completely until the exit. »Born Villain« mostly sits on simple rhythmic patterns that aren’t hard to dance to. In that space, the room is also masterfully filled with rattling bass lines that sound organic and create a vivid contrast in the sonic picture itself. The Flowers Of Evil sounds downright cheekily gothic, post-punk and shoegaze, with an excellent combination of an accelerated rhythmic pattern and riff-burning that’s reinforced by the chorus melody of Manson’s chant.
Still, there’s no disputing Manson when it comes to his refined sense of sonic manipulation. Even though the last two tracks, the title track and the closing Breaking The Same Old Ground, calm the album down, it’s precisely this sophistication, based on weaving the atmosphere out of interdependent programmed loops, that gives Manson a contrasting support, and he cuts through that soft »cobweb« with his vocal vampirism. A desperate vocal at moments flips in the next instant into a completely different experience, sounding erotically lubricated. That’s how the vocal behaves in Pistol Whipped. That track should become one of the concert favorites over the years, because it’s the literal incarnation of sexual perversions, the kind conjured up by the most delirious, wet dreams of the human imagination, and the band hits a winning poker hand as it builds the atmosphere gradually, reaching a crescendo in the chorus’s descent into depravity.
»Born Villain« is an album where Manson’s deviant side of nihilism has awakened again. You certainly can’t put this album next to the band’s early years, since Marilyn Manson simply mature over time, both in expression and in the mastery of sound production, but in essence they’ve artistically picked up the type of sonic manipulation from the previous albums »Eat Me, Drink Me« and »The High End Of Low,« which shows in the mature upgrade of the arranging of programmed loops and underlying rhythms, where over the years Marilyn Manson have thoroughly honed their craft, and on top of that, a truly angry, furious rebel spirit has returned on the new album.
Sleeping Beauty has finally awoken, the circle is complete. The new album is a kind of new beginning, an excellent starting point for further deepening the artistically expressive reach of this artist’s self-made musical stance. It’s a proper hybrid of massive sonic terror and the rebellious rock rage that fans of his attitude have been missing for a good while, while on the other side it deepens a sophisticated face of cunningly blended loops, effects and rhythms. A very good and artistically mature album.
Line-up
Marilyn Manson – vocals, guitar, keyboards
Twiggy Ramirez – guitar, bass, keyboards, backing vocals
Fred Sablan – bass
Chris Vrenna – keyboards, synthesizers, programming, drums, percussion
GUEST MUSICIAN
Johnny Depp – guitar, drums on “You’re So Vain”
Production
Marilyn Manson & Chris Vrenna
Track list
01. Hey Cruel World…
02. No Reflection
03. Pistol Whipped
04. Overneath The Path Of Misery
05. Slo Mo Tion
06. The Gardener
07. The Flowers Of Evil
08. Children Of Cain
09. Disengaged
10. Lay Down Your Goddamn Arms
11. Murders Are Getting Prettier Every Day
12. Born Villain
13. Breaking The Same Old Ground
14. You’re So Vain (bonus track)
