An older, mellower Manson tweaks image

The Washington Post

It must not have been easy to be the scourge of the religious right. How else to explain the musical make-over of Marilyn Manson, who with "Mechanical Animals" (Nothing/Interscope) abandons the industrial rock gloom of his notorious "Antichrist Superstar" album for a glam rock sound redolent of the '70s and "Ziggy Stardust"-era David Bowie?

This time around, he's a lot less Manson, a lot more Marilyn.

When he performed on last week's MTV Video Music Awards looking like a redheaded, anorexic, gender-blending alien, Manson borrowed from the subversive swirl of sex, drugs and rock-and-roll that characterized glam in its heyday. Several songs on the new album revive the glorious shout-along choruses of T. Rex, Slade and Gary Glitter, notably a thundering "Rock Is Dead'" and "I Don't Like the Drugs (But the Drugs Like Me)," which sounds a lot like Joan Jett's "I Love Rock and Roll."

Manson's critics will no doubt focus on his continued attacks on organized religion (sample lines: "You were automatic and hollow as the o in God"... "God is a number you cannot count to"... "God is just a statistic") and the seeming glamorizing of addiction in such songs as "The Dope Show"and "I Don't Like the Drugs," featuring guest guitarist Dave Navarro, the former Red Hot Chili Pepper and Jane's Addiction member who has acknowledged his own heroin addiction.

Overall, however, the sensationalism seems decidedly toned down and the music feels less threatening. "Mechanical Animals" is on Trent Reznor's label, but the Nine Inch Nails founder has been replaced as co-producer by Michael Beinhorn, who also produced Hole's new "Celebrity Skin" album. Beinhorn favors a tighter, more melodic and organically propulsive sound.

Manson himself sounds more evolved and engaged as a singer, particularly on such gloomy, Bowiesque dissections of failed romance as "The Speed of Pain" and "Mechanical Animals" ("You were my mechanical bride/ You were phenobarbidoll/ A manniqueen of depression/ With the face of a dead star").

There's also a Bowiesque element to a pair of songs that conjure Bowie's old alter egos, Ziggy Stardust and Major Tom. The latter's isolation is recalled in the strained, filtered vocals of "Disassociative"("I don't want to just float in fear/ A dead astronaut in space"), while the desperate "Great Big White World" notes that "in space the stars are no nearer/ They just glitter like a morgue."

Sometimes Manson lays it on a bit thick: "The Last Day on Earth" feels like a Cure leftover, while "Fundamentally Loathsome" is lugubrious. And considering the way Marilyn Manson has courted controversy, his musings on the emptiness of stardom, the shallowness of beautiful losers ("New Model No. 15") and the horrors of fishbowl-frenzy media hype ("The Dope Show") seem curiously insincere.

09-17-98