CalicoJane
06-03-2007, 03:14 PM
Well for some reason I can't log into in the Music Reviews section of the site. See here if you think you can help... http://www.sputnikmusic.com/forums/showthread.php?t=526435
this is my review of Eat Me, Drink Me by Marilyn Manson. Please tell me what you think [I know it's not out in the US until tuesday but it was released in Australia on 1st June].
Eat Me, Drink Me by Marilyn Manson
It's been four years since his last album and barring an awful rendition of Depeche Mode's Personal Jesus to promote his Lest We Forget greatest hits compilation, Marilyn Manson has given the world very little music wise. Instead we’ve had art exhibitions, a lot of talk of Phantasmagoria - a film seemingly based on Alice in Wonderland that Manson is both directing and starring in - and the promotion and simultaneous rise of the Celebritarian Corporation whatever that is.
All of this very well and not surprising as I have always viewed Manson as more than simply a musician. Ever since 1994’s Antichrist Superstar Manson hasn’t just created albums; he’s created mythologies and epic stories that played out not just through his music but also the artwork, the personas he adopted for each album and the wealth of background information available on his website for those who wanted to dig deeper. As a thirteen old boy I was blown away by Holywood when I first bought it. It seemed less like rock music, more like some beautiful, nihilistic, Wagnerian masterpiece complete with angry, chanting hordes, tragic heroes and lost love; all this laced with the universal themes of salvation and redemption. A week later I bought Mechanical Animals and Antichrist Superstar. I was enamoured. Manson was my new music God, an artist that was mine and not just something my dad or step-dad had played me and I‘d taken a liking to. Manson was an artist of my generation and I had discovered him myself.
As I grew older my music taste changed, evolved and above all widened. But no matter what phase I was going through, or whoever was in my current top five, Manson was always my all time favourite with his triptych being, in my opinion, the greatest musical achievement of all time [cue slating]. So when The Golden Age of Grotesque was released I was both curious and hesitant. After hearing the lead single Mobscene I was doubtful as to whether Manson could create something as brilliant as his previous trilogy. And I was right. In my opinion TGOG was, at best, a mixed bag. But what is interesting is that in hearing Eat Me, Drink Me it has made me appreciate it all the much more. It was a mixed bag yes, but at least it had highlights as well as low points. Eat Me, Drink me is stagnant and lifeless nearly all the way through.
Opener If I Was Your Vampire is a six minute brooding dirge. Manson’s voice is more acerbic than ever. ‘If I was your vampire’ he wails as the chorus explodes, genuinely sounding in pain. Maybe it’s his recent divorce. Maybe it’s all the absinthe he’s been drinking [he’s even bringing out his own brand apparently, J-Lo’s Glow anyone?]. Whatever it is, it’s pretty obvious the former has hugely influenced this album lyrically. And the results are pretty awful. Manson certainly had spades of talent when it came to writing about the coming of the Anti-Christ and the end of the world. But sadly hearing him croak ‘drive me off the mountain and we’ll burn and I’ll eat your ashes’ you begin to wonder what went wrong. But for all this criticism If I Was Your Vampire isn’t a bad song. In fact it’s one of the better on this album.
‘Putting Holes in Happiness’ is possibly the only moment on this album where we see Manson return to his former glory. It opens with an almost bluesy guitar riff and lyrically it’s a huge improvement over the previous song. Lines such as ‘take the child out back and shoot it’ and ‘I should have picked the photograph it lasted longer than you’ recall former glories but it doesn’t last long. Tim Skold - Manson’s only collaborator on Eat Me, Drink Me, and the man credited with playing all the instruments on the album bar percussion - comes in with a lengthy guitar solo after three minutes and almost kills off whatever the song had going for it. It sounds forced, unnecessary and out of place.
Sadly after this it just slowly goes downhill. ‘There’s the ones that you love, the ones that love you and the ones that make you come’ sings Manson in The Red Carpet Grave. There’s more spacey guitar noodling from Skold all on top of a boring stomp-along drum beat and some weird electric noises. First single Heart-Shaped Glasses is an off kilter, mid tempo love song complete with guitars reminiscent of The Strokes and some odd bells thrown in for good measure. Apparently written about his new found love Evan Rachel Wood it just sounds boring. A word 6 years ago I’d never have thought applicable to Marilyn Manson.
Heart Shaped Glasses is followed by Evidence [luckily not a cover of the Faith No More song of the same name] which is slightly better. Lyrically it’s still dire - ‘**** me till we know what to say’ - but Skold’s soloing sounds pretty tight here and the chorus is memorable for more than the bad lyrics. ‘You, Me and the Devil Make 3’ sounds like a left over from TGOG’s ‘clever’ titling; sadly the title is the most memorable thing about it. Album closer Eat Me, Drink Me has absolutely nothing special or different about it. It simply drags along for nearly six minutes. Compared with previous album closers such as the incredible Man That You Fear, the hook laden Coma White or even the brooding and black Count to Six and Die, Eat Me, Drink Me looks all the more insignificant.
The production on this album also warrants criticism. It is stripped and bare; gone are the chants, demonic, strangled threats and alien voices of previous albums. Manson’s voice is very high in the mix and a lot of the time everything else sounds shoved to the background. This is not necessarily a bad thing [see Holywood’s Lamb of God where Manson has never sound better] but it does begin to grate after a while. The fact that only two people were involved musically with the album is very evident and perhaps explains the lack of variety and very repetitive tempos and themes.
It is a sad day for music when one of the greatest artists of the 1990’s comes out with an album as bad as Eat Me, Drink Me. It is also bewildering. Perhaps it was losing Twiggy Ramirez back in 2002, perhaps Manson just ran out of hate for the world which seemed to be his main driving force during the triptych or maybe he’s just wrote all the great songs he had in him and his creative well has run dry. Whatever the case maybe it’s best Manson concentrate on his watercolours and film projects because his energy would be better spent on them than on albums of as poor quality as this one.
this is my review of Eat Me, Drink Me by Marilyn Manson. Please tell me what you think [I know it's not out in the US until tuesday but it was released in Australia on 1st June].
Eat Me, Drink Me by Marilyn Manson
It's been four years since his last album and barring an awful rendition of Depeche Mode's Personal Jesus to promote his Lest We Forget greatest hits compilation, Marilyn Manson has given the world very little music wise. Instead we’ve had art exhibitions, a lot of talk of Phantasmagoria - a film seemingly based on Alice in Wonderland that Manson is both directing and starring in - and the promotion and simultaneous rise of the Celebritarian Corporation whatever that is.
All of this very well and not surprising as I have always viewed Manson as more than simply a musician. Ever since 1994’s Antichrist Superstar Manson hasn’t just created albums; he’s created mythologies and epic stories that played out not just through his music but also the artwork, the personas he adopted for each album and the wealth of background information available on his website for those who wanted to dig deeper. As a thirteen old boy I was blown away by Holywood when I first bought it. It seemed less like rock music, more like some beautiful, nihilistic, Wagnerian masterpiece complete with angry, chanting hordes, tragic heroes and lost love; all this laced with the universal themes of salvation and redemption. A week later I bought Mechanical Animals and Antichrist Superstar. I was enamoured. Manson was my new music God, an artist that was mine and not just something my dad or step-dad had played me and I‘d taken a liking to. Manson was an artist of my generation and I had discovered him myself.
As I grew older my music taste changed, evolved and above all widened. But no matter what phase I was going through, or whoever was in my current top five, Manson was always my all time favourite with his triptych being, in my opinion, the greatest musical achievement of all time [cue slating]. So when The Golden Age of Grotesque was released I was both curious and hesitant. After hearing the lead single Mobscene I was doubtful as to whether Manson could create something as brilliant as his previous trilogy. And I was right. In my opinion TGOG was, at best, a mixed bag. But what is interesting is that in hearing Eat Me, Drink Me it has made me appreciate it all the much more. It was a mixed bag yes, but at least it had highlights as well as low points. Eat Me, Drink me is stagnant and lifeless nearly all the way through.
Opener If I Was Your Vampire is a six minute brooding dirge. Manson’s voice is more acerbic than ever. ‘If I was your vampire’ he wails as the chorus explodes, genuinely sounding in pain. Maybe it’s his recent divorce. Maybe it’s all the absinthe he’s been drinking [he’s even bringing out his own brand apparently, J-Lo’s Glow anyone?]. Whatever it is, it’s pretty obvious the former has hugely influenced this album lyrically. And the results are pretty awful. Manson certainly had spades of talent when it came to writing about the coming of the Anti-Christ and the end of the world. But sadly hearing him croak ‘drive me off the mountain and we’ll burn and I’ll eat your ashes’ you begin to wonder what went wrong. But for all this criticism If I Was Your Vampire isn’t a bad song. In fact it’s one of the better on this album.
‘Putting Holes in Happiness’ is possibly the only moment on this album where we see Manson return to his former glory. It opens with an almost bluesy guitar riff and lyrically it’s a huge improvement over the previous song. Lines such as ‘take the child out back and shoot it’ and ‘I should have picked the photograph it lasted longer than you’ recall former glories but it doesn’t last long. Tim Skold - Manson’s only collaborator on Eat Me, Drink Me, and the man credited with playing all the instruments on the album bar percussion - comes in with a lengthy guitar solo after three minutes and almost kills off whatever the song had going for it. It sounds forced, unnecessary and out of place.
Sadly after this it just slowly goes downhill. ‘There’s the ones that you love, the ones that love you and the ones that make you come’ sings Manson in The Red Carpet Grave. There’s more spacey guitar noodling from Skold all on top of a boring stomp-along drum beat and some weird electric noises. First single Heart-Shaped Glasses is an off kilter, mid tempo love song complete with guitars reminiscent of The Strokes and some odd bells thrown in for good measure. Apparently written about his new found love Evan Rachel Wood it just sounds boring. A word 6 years ago I’d never have thought applicable to Marilyn Manson.
Heart Shaped Glasses is followed by Evidence [luckily not a cover of the Faith No More song of the same name] which is slightly better. Lyrically it’s still dire - ‘**** me till we know what to say’ - but Skold’s soloing sounds pretty tight here and the chorus is memorable for more than the bad lyrics. ‘You, Me and the Devil Make 3’ sounds like a left over from TGOG’s ‘clever’ titling; sadly the title is the most memorable thing about it. Album closer Eat Me, Drink Me has absolutely nothing special or different about it. It simply drags along for nearly six minutes. Compared with previous album closers such as the incredible Man That You Fear, the hook laden Coma White or even the brooding and black Count to Six and Die, Eat Me, Drink Me looks all the more insignificant.
The production on this album also warrants criticism. It is stripped and bare; gone are the chants, demonic, strangled threats and alien voices of previous albums. Manson’s voice is very high in the mix and a lot of the time everything else sounds shoved to the background. This is not necessarily a bad thing [see Holywood’s Lamb of God where Manson has never sound better] but it does begin to grate after a while. The fact that only two people were involved musically with the album is very evident and perhaps explains the lack of variety and very repetitive tempos and themes.
It is a sad day for music when one of the greatest artists of the 1990’s comes out with an album as bad as Eat Me, Drink Me. It is also bewildering. Perhaps it was losing Twiggy Ramirez back in 2002, perhaps Manson just ran out of hate for the world which seemed to be his main driving force during the triptych or maybe he’s just wrote all the great songs he had in him and his creative well has run dry. Whatever the case maybe it’s best Manson concentrate on his watercolours and film projects because his energy would be better spent on them than on albums of as poor quality as this one.