Vampy counterculture icon Marilyn Manson (born Brian Warner) rode to fame on a well orchestrated media blitz centered around his lurid live performances and gleefully remorseless badgering of the Religious Right. Manson's satanic attitudinizing (see his website for an eyeful) and ghoulish Alice Cooper-meets-Anton LaVey persona earned him a large cult following among disaffected teenagers looking to scare the bejesus out of their parental units. Going the road-tested Nine Inch Nails formula of driving Industrial beats and vivisectional lyrics one step further by camping up visually, Manson hit payola with Antichrist Superstar (1996). On this album -- his finest moment -- Manson's evil imp vocals are girded by a bad acid trip assortment of percussive guitar chops, world-gone-wrong samples and dancefloor throb. The glam-dandy follow-up Mechanical Animals (1998) was a concerted effort to crawl from beneath former producer Trent Reznor's long shadow. While the album succeeded on that account, it failed to ignite the frenzied devotion of his fans. Its middle-of-the-road tempos and sanitized textures seemed less a savage indictment of the status quo than a (cringe) bid for respectability.
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