MM and time

[Filth]

Hi all. New member here. Recently found this message board. I'm thinking it might be a little more older & wiser than the official forum? I never posted on that board because the level of fanboyism is a little too much to take. Anyway...I realize this is probably not the best topic for a first post and it's going to be rambling but what the hell...

Been a big fan of the band ever since Smells Like Children came out and Manson the man was a huge influence on me during my teenage years. I was a rabid fan up until GAOG, completely checked-out during EMDM, but recently regained interest now that Twiggy has returned to the fold. Rumblings of new material has set me off on one of my annual MM binges (I do the same thing with NIN and Tool) and in the last week I've listened to all the albums multiple times and watched a ton of interviews and live footage on youtube. It's amazing to have 20 years of stuff to absorb again, but for me the last decade pales in comparison to what they did 1995-2000.

As I said before, Twiggy returning to the band immediately rekindled my interest and I think THEOL was a step in the right direction after the style-over-substance GAOG and uncharacteristically limp EMDM. The lyrical content of a song like Blank And White gives me hope that Manson can still write like he used to, and Twiggy knows what a MM song should be like sonically. However, something is still not quite right, and I think it's the absence of Pogo. While he might not have had a lot of input as far as the music, his influence on the look, attitude, and content cannot be ignored. Perhaps I'm not giving Manson enough credit, but ever since Pogo left the conceptual depth and visual intensity of the band has diminished. It saddens me that Pogo apparently burned his bridges and trampled on the ashes with his lawsuit. I'm sure once Twiggy and Manson reunited there was a part of him that wanted to make amends and return to the old gang, but I'm sure their relationship is beyond repair. But then again...Gidget Gein was scorned and kicked out of the band, only to to reestablish his friendship after many years. One can hope.

Is it unrealistic to want them to return to that insane level of creativity they had during that period? Can they?
I realize Manson and Twiggy are older now, probably have no desire to rehash their old material, and no album they put out is going to magically make me 15 years old again, but it just feels that the band has....lost it's way in recent years? It's feeling less like a band and more like Manson's solo project, if that makes any kind of sense. It's natural that a lot of artists start dealing with love & romance as they get older, but I think Manson's self-absorption has spiraled out of control. What happened to being a mirror to society, reflecting back the things it doesn't want to confront/accept? Is Manson really out of things to say about society, or did he just become complacent and uncaring once he achieved his goal of becoming the dirty & dangerous world famous rock star?

I could keep going, but I'll leave it at that for now and see what others have to say.

[Dv5]

1st post and already trying to provoke thought, and share insight. Nice. Welcome to the boards. Take a gander around and you'll see that this topic discussion is pretty prevelent around here, if not running rampant with ambiguity. So, what you don't get in the form of replies in here, you might also get some of your questions and curiosities answered by threads that are around. As for Manson becoming dangerous and controversial again? I don't see that as being as important at the time as much as him and the band just making a great record is.

There's a lot going on right now, and things to come that none of us can really predict, and that is exciting enough for me at the moment. As long as people keep talking about it, and sharing interesting updates/stirring up interesting topics than I think that is what makes an online community worth being a part of.

As I said before, welcome to Provider Module, and have a look around. :)

[Lucille]

I just spent 5 minutes deciding whether I want to reply to this thread and go there again, because I really don't want to offend people and make the board hate me. Before the Heirophant shut down I wrote pages on this topic, and a lot of what I wrote was incredibly painful to write and depressing to read, because it was around that time that I was experiencing overwhelming disillusion with MM, which was really difficult, him being the closest thing to a hero in my life.

I agree with you on some things but completely disagree on others. I for one loved EMDM (the whole era is wonderful IMO, and stands alone as a classic, with excellent songs, and subject matter/mood), and I don't think GAOG is nearly as bad as everyone makes it out to be, particularly because of the imagery, the catchy-ness of a lot of the songs, and it's excellent use of wordplay and mind-bending lyrics.

THEOL on the other hand is to me, the worst Marilyn Manson album ever put out. To this day it remains the only Marilyn Manson album I don't have a physical copy of and never bought, and I don't think I ever will. The entire year before its release I was beyond excited for it. Everything at the time had given me the assumption that things were going in the right direction again for the band. As I said, I loved EMDM (especially since it signalled Manson's return to music). I thought it was a great transitional album, breaking away from the past and going towards a wild new future. That winter when Twiggy came back added so much fuel to my excitement, especially after seeing them live right after Twiggy came back (best concert of my life). That old fire I had only had the opportunity to see on video footage, was back and back three fold. It was an exciting time to be a Manson fan, and I felt like I was finally getting to experience the good times, instead of just dreaming of how it must have been like during ACSS, MA, ect.

It all came crashing down when THEOL leaked online. I couldn't even believe that Manson, one of the most talented lyricists I've ever been exposed to, had written that steaming pile of bullshit, and worse of all, acting so seriously about it, completely oblivious to the fact that it was not good. There is absolutely nothing on that entire album that I can connect or relate to, and all of it seems beyond fake. For the first time I felt like Manson was going off pure attempted (and failed) shock value.

At the time, I developed a theory that this was the hideous influence of Kerry King and other losers from Slayer. I felt like ever since they toured together and became friends, Manson has been really obviously trying to play the "badass" again, but since it didn't come from a real place at all, it came off really fake to me. All I could hear in every interview and song from that entire era was "Rawrrr, I'm bad, rawrrr". A lot of interviews that came around/since then have led me to believe that he's been too focused on regaining the audience he supposedly lost due to his faggyness on Mechanical Animals, at the expense of any validity in his art. No matter how hard I tried, I honestly just couldn't stand how much almost every track on that album annoyed me to death. Even that tour failed to bring any sort of joy to the THEOL era for me. If I wanted to see Manson drink a beer and stand around on a bare stage, I could have... well no actually, he's never done anything as un-entertaining before.

My only hope for the new stuff is that it stays as far away from THEOL as possible, and that THEOL was nothing but a clever ploy to make an album so bad that his record company would drop him and thus they'd be free of their stifling contract.

However the next album/era turns out, I just hope that he'll do something real, and not concern himself with upholding some "bad boy" image. It all reeks of delusion and desperation. No, he'll never be in his 20's again, but that doesn't mean he has to become Alice Cooper.

*rant over* I haven't really let myself think about this for a long time.

[Dv5]

wow

[Lucille]

*shudders*

[Dv5]

*facepalms

[S.Hal0mega.B]

*facepalms

*adds double facepalm

[Lucille]

*face-fucks you both*

[Hexon.Arq]

I actually agree with Lucille to an extent, with the exclusion of only a few songs from THEOL (I'd put "15" among his best ever). In some instances it seems like much improvement could have been made with only a few minor production adjustments and perhaps a little more time (or just some extra takes. "Before you CONFUSEthe WAY we abuse each other" just makes my inner grammar nazi shit bile every time. Is there some hidden meaning in that phrase that I've missed?) As far as lyrics go, I didn't have a problem with any of them, save for some odd grammar. I thought the vocal on "Into the Fire" could have sounded a lot better if he had only tried it a couple of more times, but everyone just seemed to fawn over it, so I was like, whatever. When he talked big shit about the album prior to its release I got the sense he was just having fun, having been reunited with his best friend, and ultimately just trying to sell an album like any professional recording artist. But THEOL does seem to lack a degree of polish and purpose characteristic of previous Manson albums; it's almost like a record of hastily assembled B-sides.

[S.Hal0mega.B]

*adds double facepalm

*adds triple facepalm