Eat Me, Drink Me

by

Marilyn Manson

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Every time an artist releases a new album, they take major risks. As any Manson fan knows, Marilyn Manson savors risks and quite often reaps big rewards by plunging into territories others, even longtime fans, may find themselves reluctant to attempt entering. This album proves itself no exception.

Eat Me, Drink Me appeals to a certain spectrum of the Manson emotional range. It's not particularly political, it's not about conquering the world - it's about conquering one's own internal world. Manson paints in the same vivid colors we've gotten used to over the years, but it's like he's refined his technique while keeping it refreshingly raw. This is pure emo-fied angst being felt by a man far out of his teens, yet it's remains accessible to all ages. Love - that's what this album tackles. The curse, if you will, of love and how exceptionally powerful yet excruciatingly unbearable that force can be. Unfortunately, it's not perspective gained by speculation, either. The album began when the opening lyrics suggest: "Six AM, Christmas morning" when Manson began dealing with the end of his relationship with from Dita Von Teese that would end in divorce.

Each song stands alone and that's rare for an album, but the way they flow together truly makes them one solid masterpiece as a piece of art. Since we know Manson learned of his divorce on January 5th (his birthday) 2007 and the album came out the following June, you might wonder if the album feels rushed. It does not. Instead it feels poignant and intensely, surrealistically real. If you're wondering how something feels realistic and surrealistic at the same time - that's Manson's intentions as an artist: blending reality and fantasy.

I don't have any favorites, but having gone through my own heart-shredding relationship disaster in the month's following the album's release (she bought this album for me, crazily enough!) I empathize strongly with the lines: "I love you so much I wish you would kill me now." And that's the album's power, combining deep inner relevancy with high art.

Oh, and seeing the show helped drive it in. I hadn't heard the whole album when I saw Manson live in Phoenix, but these songs fit right in with his classics. If you're on the fence due to Golden Age of the Grotesque, I say dive off and snatch this album up. You won't regret, I promise!

("Eat Me, Drink Me" by Marilyn Manson)

I've been saying for years that Marilyn Manson is under-rated (though a bit over-rated by his most ardent fans)--beneath, or along with, the theatrics and makeup, he's actually a world-class satirist on a level with H.L. Mencken at his best. Manson's complex stew of guns, god, government and celebrity is expressed with a razor-sharp lyrical palette of punning metaphors and tossed-off references to history and religion. I've found it a bit disappointing that he's eagerly cultivated a fan base of Ozz-festing, beer-bonging, fake-tribal tatooing overgrown adolescents who use the word "fag" without referring to cigarettes. With Eat Me, Drink Me, Manson seems to have abandoned many of his best attitudes and ideas in favor of rote, mid-tempo goth/glam rockers that obsess over the former Antichrist Superstar's lousy love life.

Imagine, if you will, sitting on a bar stool next to an absinthe-swilling vampire endlesssly talking about how, for him, love is death, which caused him to seperate from his ultra-hot burlesque star of a trophy wife in favor of a just as hot but younger actress. Could you possibly feel sorry for this guy? Granted, Manson probably doesn't care if you feel sorry for him--he just enjoys saying woe-is-me in the most florid language he can muster: "It started so tragic as a slaughterhouse/She pressed the knife against your heart/And said 'I love you' so much you must kill me now..." (from "If I Was Your Vampire"). Or how about "She blew me her death-kiss/and the mouth-marks/Bled down my eye,/Like her dying/On my windshield/I can already feel/Her worms eating my spine..." ("Just a Car Crash Away")? It doesn't help matters when much of this is delivered in a raspy croak that, I suppose, is supposed to suggest the grave but instead is more like too much sleep.

There are more than a few, pardon the phrase, "saving graces" to the album, however. The guitar playing and solos are usually excellent and striking, and Manson's penchant for strong melodies withbig choruses and hooks remain undiminished, even if they're often buried in bass-heavy sludge. Breaking away somewhat from the general theme of the album are a pair of songs that clearly evoke his current interest in Lewis Carrol--his debut as a film director, the Carrol biopic "Phantasmagoria", is due to be released sometime this year--"Are You the Rabbit?" and the title track take him outside his self-imposed dungeon somewhat. The song "You and Me and the Devil Makes 3", although still obsessing over love (or the lack thereof), is more up-tempo and industrialized, reminding me of his high-water mark (for me, anyway) Holy Wood (In The Shadow Of The Valley Of Death), with lyrics that offer a taste of Manson's lyrical strengths: "hell flavored, I've got mood poisoning/You must be something that I hate..." He continues, "There's not a word for what I want to do to you..." and then offers a couple of suggestions, chanting "Murdercute Happyrape." Hey, we're talking about Marilyn Manson here, not Conor freakin' Oberst.

While this, for me, is Manson's weakest effort since the under-baked Bowie-isms of Mechanical Animals, I still haven't given up on the ghoul. While this new album is largely an excercise in leaden, lovelorn goth, there are glimpses of the "Man That You Fear" that prove he's also still someone to admire, as well.