Before I begin, it may do well to explain for those unfamiliar with Manson’s work his previous albums. He is not, by any means, a static artist whose style has remained rigid. It has changed from album to album, each time marked by new musicians in the songwriting process and Manson’s lyrics. Barring their first album, Portrait of An American family, Manson’s “classic” sound was on the Antichrist Superstar album, typified by its industrial influence, pounding aggression, and outright offense to the values of 90s America. Mechanical Animals brought a less abrasive sound with some of the punk-like ferneticism stripped down in favor of lighter music while creating a contrast with darker themes, a contrast that has marked many elements of the band since its inception.

Cover art

Through their next few albums, they varied up their sound, every new release bringing more experimentation as Manson, a lyricist in a world slowly changing, found his shock noticed only by truly desperate rebels and Christian conservative groups. While still intelligent words lay within the lyrics, the experimentation lead to varying results, from the dark cabaret of the song Golden Age of Grotesque or the rallying rebel yell of The Fight Song to the laughably censored This Is the New Hit (This Is the New Shit on the album). His last release, Eat Me, Drink Me, was a strange mix. As someone who enjoyed the renditions of The Nobodies and Coma White on acoustic, I found his more heartfelt approach strangely appealing, and saw Heart Shaped Glasses for a long time as a guilty pleasure. What it lacked in the intelligent commentary and lyrical depth (except on certain tracks) it made up for with emotion.

Here we stand, two years later, with a new Manson album only a few weeks old at the writing of this article. I’ve given this album many listens, sometimes as a music fan, sometimes as a Manson fan, sometimes as critical as possible, sometimes as lovingly as possible. I’ve examined this album from every angle I could, and I think at long last I can give my definitive, certain opinion after much internal conflict.

It blows.

Manson’s latest offering lacks even the emotion of Putting Holes in Happiness, trying to achieve some bastardized middle ground between everything he’s done previously, and yet failing on all counts. It comes off as lacking in all areas, a contrived mess of confused lyrics and melodies trying to be so many things at once. Many albums have seamlessly merged styles and emotions to have a new flavor on every subsequent track; look no further than an Opeth album for proof of that. However, each song feels like the Amalgam Comics universe, trying to mix all these different elements into each song, but not even awesome in premise like a mix of Wolverine and Batman was.

The confusion is present in nearly every song. In terms of both theme and instrumentation, there seems to be a discord, as if everyone sat in different rooms and wrote parts to different songs, and then they pulled combinations from a hat. Four Rusted Horses is an acoustic song with a country tinge, a stomping drum line, and then inexplicably a lingering synth to match the marching sound of the drums. While I applaud experimentation in music, it comes off as confused, far from the seamless combination I assume they thought it was.

Arma-Goddamn-Motherfucking-Geddon is another example of confusion. Manson has been listening to too much Rush Limbaugh it seems, because he seems to be lyrically trapped at several points in this album back in the late 90s when he was a point of controversy beyond the mind-blowingly deep “LOL MARILIN MANSIN SUX HE IZ FOR GAY PPLZ” “NO U JUS DON UNDRSTAND HIM” debates on YouTube. The supplantation of the words “fucking” and “goddamn” in “armageddon” show he’s yet to move on from the culture war and still tries to shock and offend, even when the burning of Harry Potter books isn’t making news anymore. We see the same reluctance to give up the long-since ended culture war with “Pretty as a Swastika”. I think the title about says it, folks; this is all for shock value now.

We also see him leaning more toward the role of bitter lover he showed in Eat Me, Drink Me. Songs like Devour and Running to the End of the World, the latter of which being a highlight on the album, show a more sensitive Manson, still going on over the fact that he cheated on the extremely hot Dita Von Teese with the equally hot Evan Rachel Wood, but somehow it brings out a spurned character that doesn’t make much sense. While an artist should create from the truest he knows, I have to wonder if he’s given up the intelligent critique of society hidden under his shock-rich lyrics in favour of juvenile offensiveness and weeping.

Oh, but then there’s the songs that don’t even have the weeping. Songs like WOW (which is undoubtedly my least favourite Manson track) exemplifies everything wrong with this album. He sounds like the lead singer of Cake, with monotone sprechstimme. It has moronic lyrics that really don’t go anywhere like “There’s a word that’s like you because it can be a noun, a verb, an exclamation, or the thing I say”. I expect more from the man who wrote Coma White.

As much as I hate his new direction, there are some decent tracks on the album. Arma-Goddamn-Motherfucking-Geddon, even if it’s lyrically weak, is in the vein of the Beautiful People and Disposable Teens, with an albeit castrated syncopated guitar riff. Running to the End of the World is an acoustic ballad that, while not matching the raw emotion shown in the acoustic versions of Coma White and even as recent as Heart-Shaped Glasses, still comes off as heartfelt, and I like the falsetto vocals toward the end.

On the whole, The High End of Low misses more than it hits. It tries to be everything while failing to make an identity for itself. Its pop influence, computer-layered vocals, and abandon of what made Manson so appealing to me, personally, will probably shut out a fair amount of Manson fans while being different enough to maybe appeal to non-fans. This isn’t the man the 90s hailed as the antichrist who once proclaimed “I’m not a slave to a world that doesn’t give a shit”. What he’s become remains to be seen, but this underwhelming, confused effort certainly isn’t helping him find a new identity.

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