Marilyn Manson .:. Eat Me, Drink Me

Clues that Marilyn Manson has sold out (again):
- Currently dating someone younger (and possibly more depraved) than he is.
-There’s a picture of a heart (okay, a spooky one, but still—a heart?!) on the front of his new CD.
-Only eleven tracks—a restrained, toned-down number of tracks which we associate with Celine Dion, not the angel of chaos who brought us bazillion-song fiascos like Antichrist Superstar and Portrait of an American Family that just seemed to keep the fucked-uppetry coming.

On Eat Me, Drink Me however, Manson seems to be trying for a more sinister, cerebrally-dark (as opposed to, you know, slam-dancey-dark) worldview and corresponding sound. There’s still the metal guitar riffs, still the industrial tear-down-the-house drums, but Manson, no stranger to self-reinvention, seems to be pulling on layers instead of stripping them off. It can get cheesy and even sometimes sappy—what do you expect with an album that opens with the lyrics “6 A.M. Christmas morning/No shadows, no reflections here”?

Current collaborator Tim Skold (formerly of KMFDM) holds up the musical end, and Manson’s pop-inflicted choruses still give him that sense of fun that borders on self-parody. It’s a little more poetry-writing-15-year-old than suicidal-15-year-old. But, hey, it’s Manson in love. What do you expect?