If shock rock has a central truth, it's that controversy never lasts. Well aware of this, after scaring parents half to death with 1996's Antichrist Superstar, Marilyn Manson let up on the Christian-bating. Once Columbine died down, so did his media profile. If we heard anything from him, it was either (A) about his love life or (B) some sort of pseudo-intellectual musing.But what few outside his fan base know is that Manson has matured along the way and made some incredible music. With each record he's changed his style, from glam to vaudeville and, with the new Eat Me, Drink Me, to straight-up rock 'n' roll.
Manson is better known for sulking (and sacrilege) than strutting, but here his AC/DC colors shine through. "They Say That Hell's Not Hot," for example, features jangly guitars and a swaggering, midtempo beat. The chorus to "Putting Holes in Happiness," perhaps the record's most brilliant idea, combines a fist-pumping guitar riff with subdued, angry vocals.
"Red Carpet Grave" is set to a sort of finger-snapping swing, "Heart-Shaped Glasses" to some weird cross between "My Sharona" and biting-guitar funk. Even the lurking, drum-heavy verses to "Evidence" - followed by harmonized guitar choruses that seem to come from nowhere - have a certain old-school snarl to them.
Longtime fans need not worry, though; there's something for everyone. "If I Was Your Vampire" represents Manson at his darkest and most overdramatic ("I love you so much you must kill me now"), where "Are You the Rabbit?," with its cartoon-sludge-metal vibe via super-fuzzy guitars, sounds like it's from 1994's Portrait of an American Family. The ill-titled "Mutilation is the Most Sincere Form of Flattery" has some of the vaudevillian stylings one finds on The Golden Age of Grotesque.
So Eat Me, Drink Me is good, but can it top Mechanical Animals and Grotesque? Well, it's close - Eat Me, Drink Me has a few flaws, as do those two. But all three near perfection.
The slow, wistful "Just a Car Crash Away" isn't terrible, but it can't really hold up to the rest of the record in quality. The chorus to "You and Me and the Devil Makes 3" work, but the verses descend into gibberish with too much vocal processing. The title track goes on too long for its own good.
Marilyn Manson will never again seem as threatening as he did a decade ago. But he's put out an entire catalog of worthwhile material, and Eat Me, Drink Me only adds to his legacy.
Robert VerBruggen (http://www.therationale.com) is Assistant Book Editor at The Washington Times.
