“If anyone thought Manson was down for the count, think again.”

The most surprising aspect of Marilyn Manson’s latest album, Eat Me, Drink Me - his sixth studio release – is that it’s decidedly human.

Gone are the fire and brimstone theatrics, heavy production and the Satan-spawn stereotype. Eat Me, Drink Me is an extremely personal, very mellow album and is close to, dare I say it, an album of love songs.

Granted, they are dark, morbid and creepy love songs filled with horror, death and blood stains - but they are love songs, or at least songs about love, nevertheless. Which has led some to call his latest work Emo, but I’ll have none of that label – it’s still Marilyn Manson, which means it’s probably too much for actual modern emo fans to take. In fact, one of the tracks on the album - Mutilation Is The Most Sincere Form Of Flattery - was written with My Chemical Romance in mind, of whom Manson had this to say:

I’m embarrassed to be me because these people are doing a really sad, pitiful, shallow version of what I’ve done. If they want to identify with me then here’s a razor blade. Call me when you’re done and we’ll talk.

-From The London Paper, June 4, 2007

Composed and created by Manson and guitarist Tim Skold, it is a highly guitar-driven album with extremely minimal instrumentation, and though Manson has certainly put out his share of slower-tempo songs in the past, the ones that comprise the bulk of this album take on a decidedly different feel from his previous slow pieces because of that stripped down instrumentation. Whereas previous slow-tempo releases have retained a characteristic industrial style, the latest release has more of a rock influence and features many rock-style guitar solos.

More shocking than the slight shift in musical style, and the unusual lack of “shock” itself, is the change in theme. Most of us are accustom to hearing Marilyn Manson yell, scream and menacingly mutter on about themes that are bigger than us as individuals - think guns, gods and government, mass media, et. al. - but with Eat Me, Drink Me he moves from the abstract to the particular - right here, right now and inside this human condition. While listeners will undoubtedly find application for his words in their own lives - that’s much of the joy of such music - this album is Marilyn Manson. Eat Me, Drink Me is not a work of art, it is the artist himself, in all his bare naked humanity.

With each new release, Manson tends to explore a new aesthetic and one has to ask - is this Marilyn Manson’s new style? And to that I answer - I don’t think so. This is Marilyn Manson the man. It may be sappy at times, it may not have any of those blood boiling, anger-inciting choruses, the slick theatrics and the delightfully clever strings of puns and wordplay encased in the grotesque, bizarre and extreme, but it is the most personal and down-to-earth of his oeuvre, and for fans of the artist, it can’t be ignored.

Eat Me, Drink Me is a great - if radically different - addition to the Manson collection, and for those of you who don’t like this one, just stick around. I’m sure that he’ll be bring the “big” back in yet another incarnation very soon.

Favorite tracks include the album’s opening If I Was Your Vampire, the incredibly catchy Heart-Shaped Glasses - which Rolling Stone likened to a suicidal Billy Idol, and they’re right - and You And Me And The Devil Makes 3.

(see also Rolling Stone and IndieLondon)
###

tags: antichrist, christian hoard, dita von teese, emo, evan rachel wood, goth, goth music, industrial music, marilyn manson, my chemical romance, rolling stone, tim skold

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 7th, 2007 at Jun 07, 07 | 7:50 pm and is filed under Just Noumenon Posts, Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.