siLLy puPPy With an album cover displaying a disturbed creature looking like the love child gone wrong of a grey alien and Black Widow (Scarlet Johansson) from the X-men movies, MARILYN MANSON (the man) steered MARILYN MANSON (the band) into strangely surreal territories after blowing their wad with the apocalyptic visions of their previous album “Antichrist Superstar” which was in reality the culmination of a trilogy released in reverse order. Did anyone not tell you these guys were weird? The band’s third studio MECHANICAL ANIMALS finds itself neatly tucked between the three albums that make up the rock opera and either way ends up at #2! Thematically speaking no one could have figured out the storyline at the time of release and probably no one cared but musically the band takes on the totally different realm of glam rock mixed with the usual goth tinged industrial electronica, ominous nihilistic melancholy along with the Nine Inch Nails guitar oomf only not magnified to extreme metal proportions. The result of this shift is a dramatic change in style and mood and finds the album perfectly exemplifying the theme of the Bowie-esque (think Ziggy Stardust) androgynous Omēga becoming addicted to drugs and fame after coming to Earth and turning into a rock star.

Everything about MECHANICAL ANIMALS sounds, well MECHANICAL actually. The album begins with the valium space flair feeling “Great Big White World” which finds Portishead type downtempo type beats accompanied by electronic atmospheres that are eerie and utterly detached from reality. The guitars are tuned to a twangy echo with the usual catchy glam pop type of melodies that MANSON crafts so well and are instantly gratifying. “The Dope Show” song and video are the perfect anecdote for this tale of shedding the dark and finding ways of breaking through the detached drug addictions that fame and fortune brought Omēga and his band and how they ended up becoming trapped into the cycles of consumerism, narcissism, addiction and ultimately detached surrender. The video likewise shows a shocking genderless figure struggling to maintain sanity in the artificial world that has seeped into every aspect of its existence. The slower tracks bring out strong hints of 70s Queen and Bowie with Pink Floyd space rock effects to heighten the atmospheres while the heavier tracks such as “Rock Is Dead” retains the perfect holy trinity of Nine Inch Nails bombast, Prodigy laden big beat electronica and MANSON’s predilection of Alice Cooper style shock rock only tinged with a gothic flair reminiscent of Bauhaus or The Cure.

MECHANICAL ANIMALS is a woefully misunderstood album and one that i admittedly lagged into accepting in my own musical world. After the bombast and pomp of “Antichrist Superstar,” the dopey mope of MECHANICAL ANIMALS came as the undesired antithesis of the heavy industrial metal sound that preceded. This album must be taken in context of the story at hand however upon first listen i had zero idea that a context was to be had. I just didn’t like it. Over time this album has grown on me and while some deem it MANSON’s best and some the worst, i personally find it no better or worse than its predecessor and should be judged on its own merits and not in relation to the albums that bookmark it. It is clearly an anomaly in the MANSON canon and one that he has admittedly refrained from repeating but the mood, imagery and theme of the album are perfectly suited for the overarching story at hand. However like every MANSON album, much like the opposing dichotomy of the name that graces them, there are moments of utter brilliance and likewise moments of extreme mediocrity.

Musically speaking, MECHANICAL ANIMALS is a very catchy, groovy industrial rock type of album but there are few tracks that rub me the wrong way. Slow burners such as “The Speed Of Pain” are a little sleepy and melodically bland with little payoff and some like the single “I Don’t Like The Drugs (But The Drugs Like Me)” are a little too close to the Bowie playbook and have a bass line far too close to Bowie’s “Fame” and the authenticity of the track eschews me as it resides far too close to its influence for my liking. Overall MECHANICAL ANIMALS is another excellent album from MARILYN MANSON and one of the last consistently good ones to be honest. The tracks are the perfect 90s angsty anthems with all the industrial heft and electronica wizardry frosting every cadence and stanza. A slow burner in my world but one that has finally turned up the heat and boiled down into a consistently interesting listen minus the few flaws that still rub me the wrong way.

Warthur Anyone who dismisses this album as a rip-off of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars is severely missing the point; when the inner booklet depicts Manson and pals as the alien rock band Omega and the Mechanical Animals it becomes crystal clear that we are in the realm of homage. (Now, Antichrist Superstar, there's the uncredited rip-off...) Mechanical Animals is probably the smartest of Manson's albums, and though it hasn't aged well and is ultimately a little thin on ideas, it deserves credit for at least going with a smarter concept than usual.

Half the songs on the album are shallow and sleazy rock numbers that put a glammy spin on the band's poppy gothy brand of industrial metal, with the subject matters being crass promotion of self-destructive habits and a jaded dismissal of rock altogether. The other half are spacey, dissociative pieces which express at once a distressing emotional numbness and a powerful desire to reach out and feel something with someone again. Together, these two halves come together to paint a more mature and convincing image of the pressures of fame and the distance between rock star image and the person behind the persona, just as Aladdin Sane was a more mature take on Ziggy Stardust.

It may be verging on dropping out of metal territory altogether, but I genuinely think it's Manson's smartest album - the moment where he claim closest to being as clever as he thinks he is. Unfortunately, the rest of his career seems to have been devoted to reassuring the fans who joined with Antichrist Superstar that he isn't ever going to do anything this experimental and unexpected again, and to living up to the worst cautionary tales aired on this album rather than taking any of the more thoughtful lessons from it and applying them to himself.

Perhaps the biggest problem with Mechanical Animals, conceptually speaking, is that ultimately the "album of two interwoven halves" concept boils down to the album just rehashing the same few basic songs over and over again: essentially, there's two basic musical ideas here, and that's enough for a single and a B-side, not a whole album.

And then in terms of execution, it's hard to avoid the impression that Manson is the least effective part of the ensemble, his tired mumbles and snarls playing out over a musical backing which might have been more interesting disentangled from the presence and ego of the band's namesake and frontman.