Marilyn Manson — ‘We Are Chaos’ — Album Review
It’s odd, because if you go back and read my track review of ‘We Are Chaos’ I basically say how listening to the single sounds like Manson is shedding his skin of sorts; like he’s going in a new direction for this album, one he hasn’t done before because the single sounded so different to anything he’s done before. Don’t get me wrong, this album really does sound so individual, new and different. At the same time, a few of the tracks stood out to me the first time I heard the album as ones that could easily have been on other projects.
Both ‘Red Black And Blue’ and ‘Infinite Darkness’ both reminded me Manson’s 2012 album ‘Born Villain’ (I don’t care what anyone says, I love that album) while ‘Perfume’ sounds like a perfect contender for leftover from his 2007 album ‘Eat Me Drink Me’. That’s odd too, because Manson’s albums from 2007–2012 are all regarded as a period of his career that not a lot of people like, whereas I think I connect with these albums the way most fans connect with ‘Mechanical Animals’ or ‘The Pale Emperor’. So in a way he has kind of shed his skin of doing something he already has, and is instead making music that — to me at least — sound like massive throwbacks or echoes of these lesser appreciated albums. Kind of like he’s rubbing it in people’s faces and saying “these albums are just as good as my most praised records”.
Hearing this album for the first time sent me through a range of emotions, I’m not going to lie to you. I kind of started off in denial that I liked it as a result of recently finding a lighter, truthful and more upbeat side of myself. This led me to be scared that I wouldn’t resonate or connect with Marilyn Manson like I did three years ago. He got me through such a deep and dark depressive episode, and when I listen to him now I either want to die or feel on top of the world. I was also in shock because it didn’t feel or sound like a new Marilyn Manson album either, which may be in part due to the fact I was relegated to hearing it through headphones the first time whereas I wanted to blast it through my speakers on full volume.
I know Manson as this guy who makes aggressive, loud and hard hitting songs and it was like they weren’t reaching a higher level inside of myself. One thing that I did love off the bat was the chugging guitar of the opening track, and the spoken interlude that made it sound like you’re being welcomed into a story; much like the intro to his debut album ‘Portrait Of An American Family’. That was until I hit to the song ‘Infinite Darkness’ and all my stars aligned. Hearing that song solidified it for me, not just as a throwback to ‘Born Villain’, but because it just felt so Marilyn Manson. Once I got to that song everything started to click and I started to feel a lot better about everything. I was sat listening to the new Marilyn Manson album, his first in three years, and I was absolutely loving it.
This also might just be me, but my first listen of the album gave me three overall feelings. The first was because a few of the songs seemed incredibly romantic in their own strange, unique way; this is especially evident in the song ‘Paint You With My Love’, which almost seems like Marilyn Manson doing a love song. The second was the talk of death and dying. There’s a lot of it spread throughout the album, beginning right in the first song. I don’t think this is an unusual thing for Manson or this kind of music, but the way he was singing and writing about it comes across as so eerie and real as opposed to the fiction in his earlier works. It’s like he’s looking forward and speaking about his own, or even warning the listener about their own death. I love the remark in ‘Infinite Darkness’ where he tells us “You’re dead longer than you’re alive”, which is something that had never dawned on me before and was quite a scary realization. Think about that for a moment. After all, death looms over us all and is our final destination. The third emotion was one that I never expected to hear or feel on a Marilyn Manson record at all…
When reading up on this record to write this review, I read an interview where Manson said that he saw the album as a book with pages made of mirrors. He said that it was like he was “holding up a mirror and talking to himself” — immediately evoking the imagery he used in the 2003 short ‘Doppelhertz’ — but he also mentioned how he wanted people to slot themselves inside of this concept album he had created and released. The first time listening to it, I had an experience where I slotted myself into part of the song ‘Solve Coagula’, when I heard him sing the lyrics “I’m not special, I’m not broken, and I don’t want to be fixed”. It was quite emotional for me because these are words that I relate to and feel myself, but it felt like Manson was being absolutely true and honest. That gave off a real sense of sitting and talking to himself in a mirror, while also feeling like he had let a deep and honest secret escape into the real world. Hearing the song ‘We Are Chaos’ itself felt like Manson was addressing humanity and society as a whole, but ‘Solve Coagula’ feels like you’re sat in a room with Marilyn Manson talking about both of your deepest and darkest feelings. The song also has a guitar solo that’s so emotive and feels like the instrument itself is weeping, while trying to communicate through to us in the process.
Thankfully there were hardly any disappointments for me personally when I first heard it, and if you want to ignore what I’m about to nitpick then I didn’t have any disappointments at all. After the first single was released, I saw a reddit comment highlight that the guitar at the end of ‘We Are Chaos’ sounds like it would lead into the next song. This was a brilliant observation I missed when I heard the song initially and it got me really excited to hear how ‘Chaos’ would blend into ‘Don’t Chase The Dead’. Except it doesn’t, which is one of my pathetic little nitpicks from hearing the album. The other is how I think that ‘Half-way & One Step Forward’ would have been better off being called ‘Champagne Problems’ as that phrase seems to stand out as a title more than what it’s been named.
I listen to albums in full and as cohesive entities unlike some people nowadays, because like books and black lives, albums still matter. But what can really throw me off is when the album doesn’t have a good flow to it. The latest album from The 1975 fell victim to that because it really has no flow to it, and thankfully the flow of ‘We Are Chaos’ is nowhere near as bad as it is on ‘Notes On A Conditional Form’. There’s just a load of songs that end too abruptly, or feel like they should either go on just that tiny bit longer and get cut off too soon, or like they should flow into the next. Like just as a song ends a guitar will start to go crazy, and you’ll think there’s gunna be one final lick or screech or solo. But there’s nothing like your adrenaline starting to pump around your body only to have absolutely no payoff. Aside from that I can’t find a fault with the album. Some people on Reddit have said that they’re sick of Manson repeating some of his lyrics so much within songs, but that personally doesn’t irk me.
One thing where it does hold up, or at least something I really enjoyed, was the fact that ‘Paint You With My Love’ and the title track both go hand in hand with having a prominent acoustic guitar, and on the song ‘Half-way & One Step Forward’ is a piano that really gives me a Western/country vibe. If you read what I wrote about what I wanted to hear on the new Manson album, you’ll remember how I mentioned I wanted a vibe similar to the ‘God’s Gonna Cut You Down’ cover thanks to the album being produced by Shooter Jennings, a guy who has his foot in the Country music scene already. I would say that the acoustic guitar through the album and having a piano present on ‘Half-way’ and ‘Broken Needle’ really satisfied that personal want of mine. This album isn’t a sequel to the ‘Cut You Down’ cover or ‘The Pale Emperor’ album, but instead it’s so unique and individual from both of those projects — along with all his other albums — but still manages to have some kind of connection to them. Or I hear one/have that headcanon at least.
The song ‘Keep My Head Together’ really stood out to me upon first listen, as I was getting this massive feeling of the song being a perfect contender for Pop-punk radio. I’m not a fan of Green Day or other bands in the Pop-punk, but I have friends who love that genre and I get the basic idea of it. When I first heard ‘Keep My Head Together’, the first thing I could think of is how that song reminded me of those artists and their songs, that I think it would be perfect to play on Kerrang!, and not releasing it as a single would be a massive missed opportunity. It just sounds so upbeat, radio friendly and catchy. The complete opposite to what the lead single is, or even ‘Don’t Chase The Dead’ which is a lot more darker and truer to Manson’s typical music and lyrics. Manson has also expressed how David Bowie inspired ‘Don’t Chase The Dead’, which was released as a single the day before the whole album was released. Also confirmed is a music video for the single, which is coming soon.
‘Broken Needle’ which closes the album is such a clever song with a massive sound, which also comes across as heavily emotional, particularly in the line “Are you alright? Cause I’m not okay”. In a stark comparison to ‘Paint You With My Love’, this song seems more like a breakup song, where the act of separation is portrayed as scratching a record. Manson talks of being a needle playing your grooves, before he scratches up this record and never plays it again. It comes across as a fight that’s so intense, leaving both parties so emotionally or physically scarred that they never want to even see each other again. It’s also kind of funny how on his new album he talks about scratching up a record and never playing it again, which is the ending statement. On the record pressing itself the needle apparently gets stuck when the album finishes playing, but this closing sentiment on the album feels like an extremely meta closing remark.
Final Thoughts
A few days after the album was released and I was powering through this review, I did a little research by pulling up a few interviews with various music outlets, and scoured the Marilyn Manson subreddit to find a specific interview; in doing so I made a few discoveries that made me feel so proud and emotional. If we have a think back to the mid 90’s when Manson had just made a name with his demonic cover of ‘Sweet Dreams’, he eventually became the most feared and controversial man in America. By the end of the decade he was then used as the scapegoat for the Columbine incident, before releasing a string of albums between 2007 and 2012 that aren’t regarded that highly among his fans. In between all of that he’s fallen out with so many of his collaborators and band mates like Trent Reznor, John 5 and Tim Skold. More recently he even lost longtime collaborator Twiggy Ramirez from his band, and sadly both of his parents too.
The life and times of Marilyn Manson really hasn’t been an easy or light one, but in 2015 everything has seemed to turned around. Since then he’s managed to put out three incredible records, all which sound so individual from each other and get more mature as you work your way through them. Just today as I write this, the Manson subreddit enlightened me to the fact there’s currently a massive Marilyn Manson billboard in London. But not only that, his brand new album has gone straight to #1 in 21 countries and even #2 in my home turf of the UK. It has made me so proud and emotional to see a massive billboard of somebody who was once so hated, and to know that his newest album has been so well received and successful across the globe as well. It feels like Marilyn Manson is somehow topping and improving himself. Though he will never reach the peak of his ‘Antichrist Superstar’ days, I don’t think anybody wants him to. We all just want him to follow his heart and create what he wants, and make new art which is full of so much passion. Yet again he’s managed to reinvent himself, and not only is he back in contact with bassist Twiggy Ramirez, he’s reportedly already working on a brand new album with Shooter Jennings. Here’s to the sequel to ‘We Are Chaos’. I know that I can’t fucking wait.