I sell my shadow to those who are standing in it
Marilyn Manson: Eat Me, Drink Me
So one day Mr. Brian Warner was kicking back in his Barcalounger with a snifter of cherry brandy, feeling kind of down. He set aside his volume of Lewis Carroll and flicked on the television, where by some shocking set of circumstances, a music channel was playing music. How quaint. As he sat and listened with mounting horror to the terrible emo-punk being vomited on America’s youth, he stood and pumped his fist in the air. ‘For fuck’s sake! While I was away playing around with cabaret music and hanging with rappers, music has completely gone to shit! I can do this better than these pussies!’ This album is the result.
Eat Me, Drink Me, Carroll and Nabakov references aside, is Manson’s stab at emo. The sound is his patented modern industrial glam, but the navel-gazing lyrics, the overblown song titles, and the album art featuring him done up in leather, holding himself tenderly in a room with bloody walls, it all takes on bands like My Chemical Romance at their own crapulent game. “Mutilation Is the Sincerest Form of Flattery” is directed toward them - ‘You know that I play this better than you, rebels without applause.’
These songs are largely based around the destruction of Manson’s marriage to Dita von Teese, but more generally about destructive and self-destructive relationships, sadism and masochism. Manson certainly has a lot over the bands he’s taking on with this, but he’s dipping into a hateful garbage style and it’s akin to being a better humanitarian than Benito Mussolini. For the most part, Eat Me, Drink Me is good, but only “They Said That Hell’s Not Hot” is truly oustanding. “Heart-Shaped Glasses” (the lead single), apparently referencing Kubrick’s film adaptation of Lolita, is the album’s lone shiny, exciting non-dirge moment. This is not really a criticism, the slow, pounding darkness sets a good tone for an album of furious catharsis. It works its way into a mean, afflicted groove and rides it out.
Consistent, and an interesting experiment, if perhaps a strange and ill-advised choice of direction.
65% => ***
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