Ten years after Columbine, Marilyn Manson’s tranny goth schtick feels like a fetid hangover from a bygone era. On his seventh album, the ‘God Of Fuck’ – doesn’t that sound sooo kitschy these days? – is still dutifully trying to prickle suburban mores (there’s a song with the Eminem-worthy title ‘I Want To Kill You Like They Do In The Movies’) – unaware, perhaps, that in a post-financial meltdown universe it takes more than a goth in lipstick and a creepy Nightmare Before Christmas obsession to scare the beyjasus out of the middle-classes.
Musically, The High End Of Low sounds like a glammy Nine Inch Nails tribute album, enlivened by the return, after seven years, of Manson’s original guitarist Twiggy Ramirez, whose punky riffing twinkles amidst the doom-metal sludge. Manson himself sounds like he’s gargling razor blades and absinthe. His croaked vocals stop short of headache inducing on ‘Leave A Scar’ (a black valentine to his former girlfriend, Evan Rachel Wood, written the day they broke up). On ‘We’re From America’, meanwhile, he sings in a phlegm-gobbed sneer and comes across as practically nostalgic for his post-Columbine infamy (Wanna be a martyr/Don’t wanna be a victim’). Why, he appears to be asking, can’t we all go back to hating him again? (his darkest nightmare, surely, is to be met with public indifference).
The High End of Low’s most memorable moments evoke Manson’s career best Mechanical Animals as he sets the rubber-spider nonsense briefly aside and imagined himself as an XXX-rated Ziggy Stardust – in particular, the yomping ‘Ama-goddamn-mother-fuckin-geddon’, feels like an out-take from an imaginary sci-fi goth opera (when is Marilyn finally going to get around to writing the Rocky Horror esque musical he’s always appeared to threaten ?).
Agnostics will furthermore get a guilty kick from ‘Wighty Spider’, a deliciously silly slab of churchyard riffola which suggests that, in between looking for things to be miserable about, he’s been loading up his iPod with Mastadon LPs. Alas, he’s ultimately far too keen on living up to the parent-shocking stereotype, with such trite observations as “you’re as pretty as a swastika” (excuse me but did he jut try to outrage us by invoking Nazis?)
Assuming they haven’t all grown up by now, Manson fans will adore every dark, juvenile flourish. For the rest of us, The High End Of Low serves as a cautionary tale of artistic regression. The harder Manson tries to poke us in the ribs, the duller he gets. Setting the Hammer Horror camp to one side and maturing as an artist – now that really would be shocking.
Key track: ‘Ama-goddamn-mother-fuckin-geddon’