We are the things of shapes to come

Continuing my trip back through the 2003 album charts.

18/05/03 : The Golden Age Of Grotesque - Marilyn Manson

Well, I wasn't expecting to bump into this! I can't say I was ever a fan, but didn't mind some of his/their stuff - I always thought he was a bit of a pantomime villain (and his contribution to Bowling For Columbine was remarkably level-headed), but later allegations suggest that maybe he was just a plain old villain all along. I'll try to separate the art from the artist here, but I do have a suspicion that 63 minutes is going to prove too much for my sensitive ears.

Hmmm - I'm not a huge fan of his vocal style on most of this, but taken one track at a time then I guess it's bearable enough. But a whole album is just too much for me, I'm afraid and some of the tracks are tiresomely juvenile - particularly "Para-noir" . It also has some very silly track titles - "Doll-Dagga Buzz-Buzz Ziggety-Zag", "Ka-Boom Ka-Boom", "Baboon Rape Party" and "♠".

We're at #4 in the charts this week with a new entry on the start of an eight week run, which involved a drop every week so this was as high as it ever got. The rest of the top five were Justin Timberlake, The White Stripes, Busted and Blur with the next highest new entry being Lou Reed (#31).

Wikipedia has a surprising amount on the album (331 milliPeppers) and it tells us it's their fifth album - apart from that, there's very little content of interest, which is kinda impressive. Except for the controversies section which is somewhat unfortunate title considering half of it covers the role potentially played by the album in the murder of Jodi Jones in this year - Manson again made the valid point that "the education that parents give their children and the influences they receive" plays a more important role, although there is also the argument this album could well be one of the influences received here. The other half of the section tells us two members of the group left acrimoniously after the album, with one of them suing Brian for $20 million for wasting the band's money on "sick and disturbing purchases of Nazi memorabilia and taxidermy, including the skeleton of a young Chinese girl". Nice!

Critically, reviews were a bit of a mix - most people found things to like about it with the production and the theme (30s Germany, which kinda passed me by) being most commonly praised, whilst even the greatest fans didn't go great guns on the lyrics ("inane"). Commercially, it did well chart wise getting to #1 in the US, Canada and (of course) Germany, Switzerland and Austria but it actually sold remarkably few (for a #1 album, anyway) being, at the time, the lowest selling #1 debut album in the US and in the second week it suffered the biggest drop from #1 - selling a mere 0.5 million overall.

"Customers also listened to" Rob Zombie, Nine Inch Nails, Korn and Tyler Bates - not a bunch I know lots about (and I'm perfectly happy with that state of affairs). I was interested to listen to this without expecting to like it - and it didn't really surprise me, although it was bearable in places. But a whole album of it - no, thank you.

25/05/03 - When it's good, it's very good