Holy Wood (In The Valley Of The Shadow Of Death) (Interscope)
Rating: 6 out of 7
By Ken Micallef
It is rumored that when touring, Marilyn Manson refuses to use the venue's toilet facilities, preferring instead to relieve himself in a rider-contracted 50-pound tub of cat litter. Not surprising for a man who loves wallowing in his and other people's waste. With his appetite for the paranoid and putrid, Manson has become a master of sick societal observation and shock-rock commentary.
It is impossible to consider the music of Manson without noting his lyrics. Ponder such utterances as "Do you love your guns, God, the government?" ("The Love Song"). Or, "We have no future/Heaven wasn't made for me/Burn ourselves to hell/As fast as it can be" ("In The Shadow Of The Valley Of Death"). Or, "This is evolution, the monkey, the man, then the gun" ("Cruci-fiction In Space").
Love him or hate him, you have to give it up for Marilyn Manson. Beneath his metal-glam music and disgusting public persona, Manson is a voice in the desert, confronting religious hypocrisy, greed, empty politics, loneliness, and alienation in a way that no one else can touch. Already banned in two U.S. retail chains for the cover art of Holy Wood, the album itself is more foreboding and accusatory than any cover art.
Holy Wood theorizes the death of Christ, the death of John Lennon, the American love of guns and sex and money in a kind of metal soap opera that has its seeds in the super-glam rumble of '98's Mechanical Animals. But Manson's grooves have slowed, and his melodies have broadened. "In The Valley Of The Shadow…" is moody and magnificent, a grand tribute to the power of fatalism. "The Nobodies" should be the first single, a prowling pop gem exclaiming: "The nobodies want to be somebodies." "Lamb Of God," "Coma Black," the raging "Burning Flag"…the songs soon grow bleaker and more malevolent, culminating in "Count To Six And Die," wherein a young girl is overtaken by—what else?—the Grim Reaper.
The album closes with the sound of a spinning gun barrel, then shots pealing off into thin air. Distorted, ingenious, black-hearted, and brutally frank, Holy Wood is a cartoon for cardiac arrest.
All recordings courtesy of Nothing/Interscope. ΓÇ£Disposable TeensΓÇ¥ and ΓÇ£Burning FlagΓÇ¥ written by J. Lowery, B. Warner, J. White; courtesy of Blood Heavy Music/EMI Blackwood Music, Inc./Songs of Golgotha (BMI). ΓÇ£The Death SongΓÇ¥ written by J. Lowery, B. Warner; courtesy of EMI Blackwood Music, Inc./Songs of Golgotha (BMI).
