Marilyn Manson Mechanical Animals CD

"The Dope Show" was nominated for the 1999 Grammy Award for Best Hard Rock Performance.

All tracks have been digitally mastered using HDCD technology.

Approaching the new millennium, Marilyn Manson shows himself to be standing squarely at the crossroads of the past and future of popular music. MECHANICAL ANIMALS takes the crunch and shock of '70s glam rock and mates it with the automated pings and electronic sheen of artists such as the Dust Brothers and Danny Saber (who both appear on this album). Manson's knack for going light years beyond Alice Cooper's brand of shock rock starts with the packaging itself. On it, the freaky Floridian appears as an asexual being with flaming red eyes and hair (whose appearance is not unlike a cross between David Bowie's Aladdin Sane and Diamond Dogs characters).

The music itself not only assaults the senses but a variety of targets as well. Naturally enough, the Religious Right is a convenient whipping boy ("Rock Is Dead"), as are back-stabbers ("Speed Of Pain") and the beast that is the media ("New Model No. 15," "The Dope Show"). When Manson isn't smashing you in the mouth with a crashing wall of guitars and new wavey synths, his instincts lead him into late-Floydian nihilism ("The Speed Of Pain") and hi-NRG ditties tailor-made for an imaginary sci-fi disco ("Posthuman," "I Want To Disappear").

Antichrist Superstar performed its intended purpose -- it made Marilyn Manson internationally famous, a living realization of his fictional "antichrist superstar." He had gained the attention of not only rock fans, but the public at large; however, many critics bestowed their praise not on the former Brian Warner, but on Trent Reznor, Manson's mentor and producer. Surely angered by the attention being focused elsewhere, he decided to break from Reznor and industrial metal with his third album, Mechanical Animals. Taking his image and musical cues from Bowie, Warner reworked Marilyn Manson into a sleek, androgynous space alien named Omega, à la Ziggy Stardust, and constructed a glammy variation of his trademark goth metal. With pal Billy Corgan as an unofficial consultant and Soundgarden producer Michael Beinhorn manning the boards, Manson turns Mechanical Animals into a big, clean rock record -- the kind that stands in direct opposition to the dark, twisted industrial nightmares he painted with his first two albums. It can make for a welcome change of pace, since his glammed-up goth is more tuneful than his clattering industrial cacophony, but it lacks the cartoonish menace and that distinguished his prior music. And without that, Marilyn Manson seems a little ordinary, believe it or not -- more like a '90s version of Alice Cooper than ever before. True, Mechanical Animals is the group's most accessible effort, but Manson should have remembered one thing -- demons are never that scary in the light. [Mechanical Animals was also released in a clean version, with all vulga

Marilyn Manson: Marilyn Manson (vocals, vocoder, guitar, ARP synthesizer); Twiggy Ramirez (guitar, bass, synthesizer); John5 (guitar); M.W. Gacy (piano, Mellotron, keyboards, synthesizer); Ginger Fish (drums).

Producers: Michael Beinhorn, Marilyn Manson, Sean Beavan.

Personnel: Marilyn Manson (vocals, piano, synthesizer, ARP synthesizer, vocoder, background vocals); Twiggy Ramirez (guitar, acoustic guitar, electric bass); Madonna Wayne Gacy (piano, Mellotron, keyboards, drums, shaker, sampler); M.W. Gacy (keyboards, synthesizer); Danny Saber (keyboards); Ginger Fish (drums); Sean Beavan (programming); Alexandra Brown, Nikki Harris, John West, Lynn Davis (background vocals).

Audio Mixer: Tom Lord-Alge.

Editor: Sean Beavan.

Photographers: Joseph Cultice; Marilyn Manson.

Additional personnel: Zim Zum (guitar, beinhorn, synthesizer); Dave Navarro (guitar); Danny Saber (strings, Clavinet, programming); DJ Neil Strauss (scratches); Kobi Tai, Dyanna Lauren, John West, Lyn Davis, Nikki Harris, Alexandra Brown (background vocals).Rolling Stone (10/1/98, pp.65-66) - 3.5 Stars (out of 5) - "...Its ultimate sources are the goths: Bauhaus, Love and Rockets, and early Cure...[it] gets its cavelike spaciousness from these influences and tweaks them with an industrial crunch, an arena-rock guitar solo or a soulful backing vocal..."
Spin (1/99, p.91) - Ranked #7 on Spin's list of "Top 20 Albums of '98."
Entertainment Weekly (9/18/98, pp.84-85) - "...there is something deeply outrageous about MECHANICAL ALBUMS: It's a Manson album that delivers on music as much as on image....Looking back in mascara'd anger, Manson and Beinhorn have fashioned music steeped in glam rock and concept-album bombast but updated with a crunching intensity..." - Rating: A-
Entertainment Weekly (9/18/98, pp.84-85) - "...there is something deeply outrageous about MECHANICAL ALBUMS: It's a Manson album that delivers on music as much as on image.... Looking back in mascara'd anger, Manson and Beinhorn have fashioned music steeped in glam rock and concept-album bombast but updated with a crunching intensity..." - Rating: A-
CMJ (1/11/99, p.3) - "...The epic glam rock of MECHANICAL ANIMALS is drenched in evil overtones and possesses a power and complexity that drowns out the roar of knee-jerk press hype..."