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Originally Posted by SuchFriendsAreDangerous
I was just listening to Antichrist Svperstar two nights ago, it led me to watch the Dead to the World video on youtube.
All in all you can be forgiven, Marilyn Manson between 1994-1998 was actually good, in fact, really good. I still think Antichrist Svperstar belongs in the 20th century pantheon of rock albums. It was layered. It was original. It was intelligent. It was trolling the fuck out of everyone. It was art. It was theater.
Marilyn Manson were just a bunch of theater nerds in high school and started a theater nerd band that caught attention at the perfect storm for their nerdcore approach. They reinvented themselves and their image as some kind of debauchery fueled misanthropes and yet I think the joke was on everyone (including most of their fans) who didn't realize it was all just some nerd stuff.
Really, Trent Reznor made Antichrist Svperstar. It is a Trent Reznor album more than anything, and when you listen to it in hindsight with that insight it becomes a better record.
The layers and textures of that record were like a darkside of Kid A. It was more brilliant than it gets credit for simply because of its popularity as well as the schlock rock aspects of the band's tour and publicity.
I think if we listen to that record on its own, not knowing anything about it, it would get more credibility. Also Portrait of an American Family, another Trent Reznor influenced piece, is another great metal album. It was before the band became subsumed in their own imaginations about themselves, they were just a straight forward metal band full of awkward theater nerds from northern Florida..
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I kinda think you're right about it being a good record, but I disagree about *why* it's a good record. To me, it's really not a Trent project. I was into NIN long before I got into or even heard of Manson, and I know ACS was released on Nothing./interscope, and produced by Reznor, but it didn't contain the broad stokes or the minute details that make his best work classic.
I think ACS is good in the same way that I think some Guns N' Roses is good. It's just morherfucking dumbass rock, but it's heavy and effective. Yeah, there was all this pretense about it being a concept album, but it's not really. It's just a bunch of 3 chord bangers, bathed in some weird industrial and electronic shit. I haven't listened to it in forever, but the absurdly simple riff of "The Beautiful People" is still ringing in my ears. That means it did something right. Like Never Mind the Bollocks or the aforementioned Gn'R (who I really quite hate, but still him "Civil War" to myself every now and again.)
I respect your opinion on this one, and don't feel strongly about it enough to argue. You may be right. I think NIN definitely made some Kid A-esque music (for lack of a better term... It's all Aphex Twin aping), but I think the MM records were just Trent's excuse to make thrashy mindless music. Once he stopped being involved, MM suddenly sucked.
Anyway, whatever... Cryptorchid was a great song. Haven't heard it in 15 years but I'm sure it's still good. So is Angel with the spread wings. "Good" being kind of a malleable word in this case.