A dissection of Marilyn Manson's third album continued...

TRACK BREAKDOWN -

_{Tracks 1 - 4 :} (Irresponsible Hate Anthem; The Beautiful People; Dried Up, Tied And Dead To The World; Tourniquet.)

Accusatory and extreme, the album kicks off with the chant "We love hate/We hate love". The first four tracks are varying in physical grandeur, but speed into a rapid sense of brutality and hate. Strong basslines and drum beats from the first second. It soudnds like an outcry to assemble the freakshow of outcasts. But by the end of the cycle, the outcry is replaced with tightly strung electronics.

Stand out lyrics - "Hey victim/you were the one who put the stick in my hand"(Irresponsible Hate Anthem) and "I wrapped our love in all this foil/Silver tight like spider legs"(Tourniquet)

_{Tracks 5-11 :}(Little Horn; Cryptorchid; Deformography; Wormboy; Mister Superstar; Angel With The Scabbed Wings; Kinderfeld.)

The songs become more layered and intense - sound fading in and out to strange cold keyboard-electronic combinations. It smacks of self-loathing, and repulsion, and perversion; like a cockroach has just crawled over his rice pudding. You can almost feel the subconscious shift into demons and pentagrams and mouldy rooms. Unlike NIN's "The Downward Spiral", the low point is in the middle rather than at the end. From then on, there is a continuing sense that the loathing and disgust is slowly being turned on the listener.

Stand out lyrics - "Prick your finger it is done/The moon has now eclipsed the sun/The angel has spread his wings/The time has come for bitter things"(Cryptorchid) and "Oh no/I am/All the things they said I was"(Wormboy) and "Because Today is black/Because there is no turning back" (Kinderfeld)

_{Tracks 12-16 :} (Antichrist Superstar; 1996; Minute Of Decay; The Reflecting God; Man That You Fear.)

The last cycle is wheeled in on a hard, healthy chant not unlike that of a Nazi rally. Unlike the outcry at the beginning of the record, this is, instead, a demonstration. Of power and pride in being one of the fallen and grotesque. The music ducks and dives like a careful constructed mechanism. There is no hate, just pride. This monster is coming to get you, and when he finally catches up, you are attached to his back on a rusty hook, and dragged out into the desert for the last lonely song, just waiting to be swallow up, right into Hell.

Stand out lyrics - "I shed the skin/to feed the fake/(Repent)/That's what I'm talking about/Whose mistake am I anyway?"(Antichrist Superstar) and I can't believe in things/that don't believe in me"(1996) and "A lack of pain/a lack of hope/a lack of anything to say"(Minute of Decay) and finally "My world is unaffected/there is an exit here...you'll understand when I'm dead"(The Reflecting God).

_{Tracks 17-99 :} 84 silent tracks, then a chorus of jarring metallic murmurs one can only imagine to represent the Christian Hell depicted by Revelations. Nothing is clear cut, the words are melting into each other...everything is dead.

Back to Part One