Album Review: Marilyn Manson, We Are Chaos (Loma Vista Recordings)
Marilyn Manson is one of those artists that weather changes in musical fashion and manages to remain relevant. He started way back in 1989 as Marilyn Manson & The Spooky Kids. Since then he has released 11 studio albums. We are Chaos is one of his best since Mechanical Animals.
His last 2 efforts, The Pale Emperor and Heaven Upside Down, have been a gradual build to this release with elements of both found here. Manson wears his influences on his sleeve with nods to New Wave, Bowie (Keep Head Together), Cure-esque vibes (Paint You with My Love) and Alice Cooper, which isn’t a surprise.
Manson met Shooter Jennings, producer of We Are Chaos, on the set of Sons of Anarchy. He describes it as a masterpiece and rightly so. However, the mastery does not just lie within the song-writing and performance, the production is impeccable.
The beauty of this record is that there are no filler cuts as Manson makes a dramatic shift to pure rock and roll over his historical industrial sound. Manson has a clear understanding of who he is nowadays. The need to shock has disappeared and we now hear more of the man and less of the character. He’s just a middle-aged man with man feelings, expressed bluntly and best on Solve Coagula: “I’m not special, I’m just broken and I don’t wanna be fixed.”
If you have stopped listening to Manson or not familiar with his later work, this album will pull you back in. Essential listening for 2020.
Mark Kendrick
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