Marilyn Manson: The Pale Emper (Review)

      

The new Marilyn Manson album The Pale Emperor flows slowly like lava, driven primarily by bass and drums rather than the brittle processed guitars of the past. The second single "Deep Six" might be about the heaviest thing on the album, the rest falling closer in tone to the first single Third Day of a Seven Day Binge, with its rock steady beat and lurching bass. Manson hasn't crafted atmosphere like this in some time, maybe since Golden Age of Grotesque, and it sounds like he's traded some of the raw aggression for a sense of nocturnal desperation, not unlike the Afghan Whigs or Nick Cave in some places. The Pale Emperor sounds almost classy for a Marilyn Manson album, like dark suits and spilled wine.

Manson at his peak was a man of the times, and never an artist that people could picture doing his schtick at age 70 like the Stones (though I imagine that in the late 60s it was hard to picture the Stones still doing it at that age either), but The Pale Emperor shows us hints that Marilyn Manson might just find a way to age while remaining a viable artist. It definitely shows that despite the confused feel to some of his last albums, he's found a way to write honestly in the 21st century, without the need to resort to blunt force or elaborate artifice.

In a recent interview, he credited the sounds on this album to his time spent working on Sons of Anarchy, where he was exposed to more blues and blues-based rock than his background in goth and industrial had offered. Of course, that's not to say that he picked up a battered acoustic and a glass slide and started wailing about working the fields - it is still identifiably a Manson project, but perhaps for the first time he's leading with something other than excess. There is a stripped-down feel and slower tempos to many of the songs, and while the blues may not be overt, it is very definitely present in the voodoo drums, warm guitar tones, and diabolical swagger. It's clear that while Manson always wanted to be our devil's advocate, we are dealing with a different devil here, because the record feels less like a shocking dare and more like a tempting suggestion.