Marilyn Manson - The Pale Emperor

As someone who hasn’t heard any Marilyn Manson since ‘Holy Wood’, way back in 2000, it was with a mixture of excitement and trepidation that I listened to ‘The Pale Emperor’. After being reliably informed by a friend that his last three albums had been pants, and knowing that my favourite Manson album was his debut in the Nineties, I wasn’t sure what to expect. In short it’s great. Not in a typical Manson, media-provoking comment-on-the-world kind of way, but in a decent album kind of way. Manson, on this his ninth studio album, has exercised restraint and as a result has achieved a more mature sound. His anger and loathing is still there, but for many of the songs it is turned inward rather than out at the world. He sounds slightly tired of it all, in a fabulously bluesy way, but retains his sleazy twisted slant on things. The ‘Beautiful People’ drums and guitar chug still pop up, the off-tune guitar and screamy chants make an appearance, but the typical MM ‘sound’ has developed into something more. There are no singular ‘hits’ but no filler tracks either. Rather than creating shock or disappointment he has successfully created a decent album as a whole, one that needs to be listened to from beginning to end.