Marilyn Manson - Is darker than ever!

Marilyn Manson **** (Main Stage 2) Smoke and subdued lighting characterise Mansonperformances. He loves to thwart the lens.  His live show is to be lived in, within the moment. It has an existential quality to it.  It can’t quite be recalled or relived through any form of secondary media. Perhaps this is what makes seeing any live show of Manson well worth watching.  It was one of the most fascinating performances of the festival.

It was up there with Faith no More, and Alice Cooper, scoring high against my personal scale of bizarre surreal quirkiness.  I have to say I really appreciate this kind of shit. All great artists suffer for their art, but when it comes to Marilyn Manson, it’s the fans that suffer, but it is at each other’s hands, not Manson’s. Marilyn Manson the ‘poster boy for fear’, serves to play out the shades our darker nature.  He helps us to acknowledge our shadow and draws attention to our dualistic nature. 

We all have the same possibility to choose what we manifest and once we see that darkness in ourselves it loses its power to subconsciously subvert our actions. For me Manson is Greek theatre, a dark arts performer essentially singing the song of the satyr, with elements of catharsis.His persona exists to cleanse the grip of religion on the western psyche and points to the need to own up to and integrate our darkness as an essential part of achieving a personal sovereignty.

Our darkness is not separate, it is not something other and outside.  At least this is the theory, but it didn’t help explain why the Manson fans standing next to me acted like harpies from hell? My enjoyment of the show was nearly ruined by the girl behind me screeching all the lyrics in my ear like a demented witches cat, while she persistently kicked my right leg in an effort to move in front of me to be up against the barrier. 

I found I had to breath deeply and focus on my breath, and go Buddha on myself... I acknowledged the pain in my leg and I observed that I was angry with the girl who was going mental, but, it took great effort to let the emotion go so I could focus on the performance and enjoy the show... but part of me really wanted to punch her lights out. I wonder if any deeper meaning is lost on fans that glory in revelry of hatred. At one point, Marilyn Manson transformed himself into a parody of Hitler, which was very much enhanced by his shorter hairstyle. 

This made me feel very uncomfortable, but I think that is Marilyn Manson's goal to make you question things and be uncomfortable. So I questioned if my Manson theory was wrong and was I actually attending a party in Hell, but who wants to go to Heaven anyway's... most of the good people are in Hell. As if I hadn’t suffered enough during the festival that day!!! In order to get a good spot for Marilyn Manson I endured being crushed against the barrier during ‘In Flames’ and received numerous blows to my over sensitive head delivered by successive waves of crowd suffers.

The scar across my head, left from an operation I had to remove a heamangioma in my skull, was tingling like mad by the Manson show.  It was so bad I was starting to phase out.  I thought I might be Harry Potter and Manson was Voldemort. The girl going crazy in the crowd was Bellatix Lestrange with an army of death eaters. Ok I will admit that my inner drama queen was on the loose during the show.

The tingling was real and so was the slight feeling of being concussed, but how do you explain to people going nuts at a festival that your head is a bit sensitive because you have a titanium plate covering a hole in your skull Compassion had no place with this festival audience, as they clamored and scratched and kicked to get inches closer to their idol. Although I am tempted to deduct marks for the audience, I can’t quite penalise Manson for that. 

Their actions were not his responsibility and after all the disorder and anarchy did make the experience feel authentically Metal. It is the music combined with stage craft that I love, but I have to remind myself that I am not attending the theatre. Marilyn Manson’s set included a mix of songs from the new album and classic hits, quite a lot of the classics were from 'Antichrist Superstar'.  I would have preferred him to leave out his covers of 'Sweet Dreams' and 'Personal Jesus' in favour of showcasing  more from the new album. His new album lyrically contains some of his best work, although musically the sound is lacking in innovation compared to earlier work... I am just not a fan of Marilyn Manson covers.

I don’t understand how 'Sweet Dreams' his Eurythmics cover, is one of his most popular songs. In part it is because of my appreciation of Manson as a unique artist that these songs irk me. I feel there is a dissonance between these and the rest of his catalogue, but that no doubt is the point to some extent. At least he left 'Tainted Love' out of the set and put in the brilliant 'Third day of a seven day Binge'... which is just so moody and brilliant. It would have fitted the atmosphere of the festival for ‘I have to look up just to see Hell’ to feature on the set, but songs from 'High end of the Low' an album that I personally think is really underrated... didn’t get a look in. 

I can’t fault Marilyn Manson’s performance, but the setlist wasn’t quite what I wanted to hear at Graspop. He seems to be back and form and it was a delight to see that, and my friend and editor Dan Devour loved the fact he played new single 'Deep Six, No Reflection' and 'Angel with the scabbed Wings' so he was in heaven. If you didn't manage to catch one of Marilyn Manson's festival appearances, you can see him on tour in the UK in November.