Mechanical Animals - Marilyn Manson

I begin this review with a brief public announcement about vowels. U is not the same as O. Seems obvious but it’s caused me no end of confusion. See, there are a bunch of lads from Chester who play something approximating quirky indie rock. They’re known as Mansun (note the use of a U) and for a few years had the distinction of being my favourite band as the released two stunning albums and a veritable shed load of EP’s with top notch Bsides (They have since fallen to second as they released a rather dull third album and stopped making those great EP’s at about the same time I discovered a rather nice band called Mr Bungle). ...  Read the complete review

This album(in America, and in 1998 at least!) was the most anticipated follow-up of any artist in perhaps the past five years. Picking up where 1996's majestic 'Antichrist Superstar' left off, theres not much difference between this album- lyrically- and the last. Little Brian Warner from Canton, Ohio is still utilizing the character to have another go at it, and hes still wallowing in self-loathing; not to mention loathing of all around him as well. No doubt this was a cop-out: surely he didn't want to rock the boat too drastically. This ostentatious twit was marketing this CD as a testament of a dystopic future world in which the antichrist character ...  Read the complete review

We have a new record shop that has opened near our college, it’s about a 40 minute walk, but it is well worth, all the new albums are priced at £10.00 and the not so new albums are a steal at £6, the drawback obviously is that they do not have the vast selection that stores like Virgin have, but it was due to the price that I picked up a couple of albums that picked my fancy. I managed to get this album for £5.99, which is a complete bargain, and I have to admit, it is probably one of the best albums that I have ever bought, I wrote in my recent Slipknot opinion that people to tend to frown upon bands and artists such as these, indeed our very own dooyoo ...  Read the complete review

Following the dirty, alt-metal sound of predecessor 'Antichrist Superstar', Marilyn Manson took a change in direction with his third full-length, 'Mechanical Animals', which buries the metal sound of the former album under a series of detatched and spaced-out guitars and a supercharged glam-rock sound. Essentially Mechanical Animals is Manson ripping off David Bowie, both musically and vocally, but he does an excellent job of doing so and produces a cracking album in the process. The songs deal with the disillusionment associated with drug-abuse and fame, as well as the artificial nature of Western consumerist culture, and whilst hardly original topics for ...  Read the complete review

‘Wow! David Bowie’s suddenly gone space age on us. It’s 1998 and he’s updated his ‘ziggy stardust’ image for the 20th/21st century. The hermaphroditic image on the cover shows him more Glam than ever, and the music’s been updated too. In fact, it’s been a while since I heard anything by Bowie, but he’s obviously taken a leaf from Trent Reznor’s book, adding a modern industrial sound to this album. New technology is embraced, using vocoders, synthesisers, electric drums, samples, keyboards, scratching, etc; yet without losing emotion from songs like ‘Disassociative’, ‘Speed of Pain’ and ...  Read the complete review