Issue #78: Marilyn Manson – Mechanical Animals

Released:  September 14th, 1998

Recorded:  1997 – 1998

Genre:  Glam Rock, Industrial Rock

Record Label:  Nothing / Interscope

Duration:  62:30

Producers:  Michael Beinhorn, Marilyn Manson, Sean Beavan

Personnel

Track Listing

Singles

Why Mechanical Animals is One of My Favorites

I’ve been back and forth a dozen times on this one over the last couple of weeks, and I finally decided that I just might like this album more than I like to admit.  More than anything, my enjoyment of Mechanical Animals was hampered by Manson’s previous material, and my utter disbelief and shock at the band’s abandonment of the dark and twisted sounds on Antichrist Superstar.

Now that’s not to say that Mechanical Animals isn’t dark in its own way, but the music is much different, drawing away from their industrial and metal influences and moving back in time to the glam rock of he 1970s.    The album still retains its share of electronic elements, distortion, and some of the sounds that the band had become known for and sticks it into a more approachable package that is markedly less heavy.

Mechanical Animals was probably the most I ever got excited about a single album.  Having really gotten into Marilyn Manson roughly a year before its release and quickly establishing Antichrist Superstar as my favorite, I counted down the days until the band’s next release.  For being 13 and having limited resources at my disposal, I did a pretty good job of staying on top of what was happening.  I was able to download a copy of the first single, “The Dope Show” a couple of weeks before it was released officially, I glued myself to the TV for the world premiere of the new video for said song, and I talked my parents into driving me to the nearest record store immediately after school on the day of release.  Yep, I was really, really ready for Mechanical Animals, but I’d never again get this excited about an upcoming record.

There were other records that I looked forward to and others that I bought on the first day, but I was careful to temper my expectations after my experience with Mechanical Animals.  It was my first wake up call to the reality that bands change.  I was angry that it didn’t sound anything like his previous work, though I still listened to it religiously in order to find some validation.  I ended up liking it quite a bit, but it would forever alter my opinion of Manson; he began to become a businessman, not a revolutionary, a product, not an artist.  I can deal with that a lot easier nowadays, but when I was 13 and looking for meaning wherever I could find it, it was a severe blow that eventually took another few years to completely settle in.

Manson has come up with a very elaborate story connecting his triptych of albums from the era – not only is Antichrist Superstar, Mechanical Animals, and Holy Wood (In the Shadow of the Valley of Death) each a concept album unto itself, the three also combine to tell one big story, moving in order from Holy Wood, to Animals, to Antichrist.  Bullshit?  Maybe.  I’ve never bought much into stories like these.  Fear Factory’s Obsolete may be the only thing that’s come closest to convincing me.  But from the beginning he has insisted that this has something to do with an alien and a rock star (or becoming one?) and getting lost in drugs; then there’s another character named Alpha, and both of them end up looking for Coma White…I don’t know.  What is made “clear” in the album booklet is that there are “2 entities” on the album.  One of them is this “Alpha” character, who “performs” tracks 1, 3, 5, 6, 7, 13, and 14, and the other is the “band” known as “Omēga and the Mechanical Animals” who performs the remainder of the tracks, 2, 4, 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12.  The hidden track (hidden quite well I might add) is an epilogue of sorts, from Omēga.  Oh and let’s not forget about the blue album cover that reveals “secret messages” in the liner notes.

Back then I suppose all of this added something to the music, though nowadays I find it a little passé; if you want to tell a story, write a book.  If you want to make a record, then let’s make some fucking music and let it speak for itself.  Let’s not be forced to piece together vague statements from 2 dozen interviews and a throwaway comment caught backstage…and a goddamn “decoder” for the liner notes…let’s just do it.

I suppose Manson considered it “inspired,” but he drew heavily on David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars-era for both the music and the image.  In fact, if you’re familiar enough with Bowie’s work around this time, some of Manson’s riffs sound a lot like sped-up Bowie tunes (“Speed of Pain” comes to mind).  Regardless, fan and critics would hail Mechanical Animals as the highlight of the band’s career.  “The Dope Show” was their most successful single to date, and although the album still drew its fair share of controversy (I still can’t believe how many people thought that the album cover was real…idiots), it was also widely accepted.  With Antichrist Superstar he’d made people pay attention, but with Mechanical Animals, he was finally able to make them listen.

And I guess it worked out well enough for everyone – the band cemented their place in the world as more than just a passing shock rock fad, and many people got what they considered one of the great albums of the 90’s out of it.  And it is a good album, I just wish it wasn’t Manson, and I wish it wasn’t the followup to Antichrist Superstar.  That’s my real hangup.  I know it’s stupid, but it’s something I can’t shake.  I actually think it would’ve been great if Mechanical Animals could’ve been released as a side project or something.  Next to the sinister ACS, next to all the filth and decay, it’s too damn squeaky-clean, too poppy and glitzy.

Mechanical Animals has a grandiose sound to it.  The “crunch crunch” of guitars is still prevalent, but they’re less abrasive and softened by background synths, background vocalists and a generally smoother delivery from Manson rather than the growls, screams, and menacing whispers of previous records.  The lyrics (most of the time) are what kept me interested even when I was busy scoffing at the more accessible musical approach.  They aren’t as angry and confrontational as those of ACS or as twisted and perverse as those from even further back.  Instead, they focus more on the emptiness and superficiality of a world fixated on celebrities, drugs, sex, drugs, money, drugs, and drugs.  (NB: I just saw a quote from a critic almost exactly like this on Wikipedia.)  He’s still got a knack for being poetic yet vague, although I think people had an easier time digesting this notion of detachment and disconnect rather than the rage and fear of ACS.

Most people will remember the album for “The Dope Show” and “I Don’t Like the Drugs.”  “The Dope Show” is a nice representation of the album’s sound at its core, but “I Don’t Like the Drugs” just sounds silly to me now.  I guess it’s funny when you’re a teenager, but once you’ve really been through or seen addiction first hand, it just seems like a really trite way of looking at the situation.  Musically, it best represents the glam side of the album with its backup singers and funky bassline reminiscent of Bowie’s “Fame.”

My favorite moments are the amped up, fast-paced, noisy tracks on the album.  “Posthuman” is backed by a great industrial beat, and though the guitar doesn’t “boom” so much as it squeals and scrapes, it’s loud and wild.  “New Model № 15” creates a similarly dense “wall” with guitars in the chorus while opting for a more electronic-driven verse.  “User Friendly” represents the most complete fusion of glam and industrial on the album, and at 13, I was a real sucker for the line, “I’m not in love / But I’m gonna fuck you / Til somebody better / Comes along.”  “Rock is Dead” tries to combine the ferocity of ACS with the flashier sound of Animals, and it’s pleasant enough, but a little too catchy for its own good.  “I Want to Disappear” is another one of the stronger tracks, with the respectable fusion of industrial rhythms and the bombastic glam-inspired chorus.

Then there’s the slow, almost acoustic side of the album, with songs like “Speed of Pain,” “Disassociative,” “Coma White,” and “Fundamentally Loathsome.”  I like these songs for the most part, but I wish they were a little less formulaic and varied more in song structure.  It’s a little too much of the verse-chorus-verse-chorus-chorus-bridge-chorus-chorus-chorus-chorus and they can get a tad tiresome.  Of the four, “Speed of Pain” is the most aimless and draggy, though it culminates in a beautiful ending, beginning with the “Lie to me / Lie to me / Give to me…” passage.  The descending chord progression is one of the highlights of the album.  “Disassociative” starts out slow before crescendoing in an indistinct wall of noise, and it gets pretty loud, but it’s always represented the slower, softer side of the album to me.  “Fundamentally Loathsome” is my favorite of the lot with its quirky rhythm and piano part.  “Coma White” is supposed to be a pretty big moment on the album, but like “Speed of Pain,” it doesn’t really move along.  Manson’s croak-like croons drag the song on far too long.  The chorus is loud and tragic, and reasonably catchy though.

“Great Big White World,” “Last Day on Earth,” and “Mechanical Animals” represent a middle ground that I can’t quite classify.  Ironically, the title track is probably the track that I paid the least attention to in all my hundreds of listens.  “The Last Day on Earth” is a midtempo number that develops a huge sound through layers of guitars and synth.  “Great Big White World” follows the formula of several other songs on the album with it’s rhythmic verses and expansive, airy choruses.

“Untitled” is a neat little gem that was only included on the CD pressing of the album and presented itself via an AutoRun program if placed in a computer’s CD-ROM drive.  The program launched, taking over the entire screen and placing one of Manson’s paintings in the center, and the creepy, electronic track began to play.  At the time I listened to CD’s via the computer all the time, so it wasn’t unusual for me to pop it in, and thus the “hidden track” was a true surprise.  Because of its strange location it’s usually lost among discussions of Mechanical Animals, but I happen to like this little experimental blurb quite a bit.  Strong, distorted synth notes play slowly as Manson sings in a broken, robotic voice.  It’s weird as hell, only lasts about a minute and a half, but I think it’s an excellent piece of work and I wish that whatever influenced it had more of a presence on Mechanical Animals.  Technically it shouldn’t really be credited as the fifteenth track since there’s nothing to suggest its placement amid the other songs, but that’s ok.

So for better or worse, there’s Manson’s alleged masterpiece.  After listening to it some I can still find the appeal of the crafty hooks and the danceble verses; it’s on the rough side of “commercial” but it’s definitely out to speak to a larger demographic.  I think what ultimately deters me is the adherence to traditional song structure and the length of the songs themselves.  Often my favorite parts happen in the more rhythmic verses, but they’re too short and gone halfway into the song, only for the chorus to repeat endlessly.  If short verses is what Manson was after, that’s fine, though I think he should’ve shot more for the 3 minute mark.  Average track time is about 4 and a half minutes (I did the math!) and it’s a bit too long for what the boys are offering this time around.  In may cases the chorus just goes on and on and on and not only does it get tiresome at the time, but it wears out the catchy hooks more quickly than it needs to.  Then again, this was a problem I was noticing in a lot of late 90’s and early 2000’s music; I suppose in his attempt to “infiltrate” he mainstream, Manson was following along.  I will say that the sequencing was nicely done; even though some of the chorus start to sound the same the songs are arranged in a way that best contrasts them with one another.

As I said, somewhere along the way I began to really like the album (when I was about 14, I went with my parents on a vacation to Australia for 2 weeks, and this was 1 of a mere 6 CDs I was able to bring with me) but I’ve always held it against the band and in some ways the album itself.  I have my issues with it, though in the larger scheme of things, I would have to say that this would be the last thing even approaching greatness that the band would produce.  Holy Wood was just sort of okay – it certainly stepped back in the shadows – but it was too damn slow and too much about Kennedy and Lennon.  From there, a changing lineup and loss of relevance really took their toll and though the albums continued to pop out every few years, all in all they were lackluster affairs.  However, a new album seems to be on the horizon…

Written by The Cubist

Other albums from Marilyn Manson in this series:

• 1994 – Portrait of an American Family – Issue #62
• 1995 – Smells Like Children – Issue #61
• 1996 – Antichrist Superstar – Issue #3

Back to The Cubist’s 90’s Albums

Written by The Cubist

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