Mechanical Animals

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Album Reviews:
Rolling Stone (10/1/98, pp.65-66) - 3.5 Stars (out of 5) - "...Its ultimate sources are the goths: Bauhaus, Love and Rockets, and early Cure...[it] gets its cavelike spaciousness from these influences and tweaks them with an industrial crunch, an arena-rock guitar solo or a soulful backing vocal..."

Spin (1/99, p.91) - Ranked #7 on Spin's list of "Top 20 Albums of '98."

Entertainment Weekly (9/18/98, pp.84-85) - "...there is something deeply outrageous about MECHANICAL ALBUMS: It's a Manson album that delivers on music as much as on image....Looking back in mascara'd anger, Manson and Beinhorn have fashioned music steeped in glam rock and concept-album bombast but updated with a crunching intensity..." - Rating: A-

Entertainment Weekly (9/18/98, pp.84-85) - "...there is something deeply outrageous about MECHANICAL ALBUMS: It's a Manson album that delivers on music as much as on image.... Looking back in mascara'd anger, Manson and Beinhorn have fashioned music steeped in glam rock and concept-album bombast but updated with a crunching intensity..." - Rating: A-

CMJ (1/11/99, p.3) - "...The epic glam rock of MECHANICAL ANIMALS is drenched in evil overtones and possesses a power and complexity that drowns out the roar of knee-jerk press hype..."
Album Notes
Marilyn Manson: Marilyn Manson (vocals, vocoder, guitar, ARP synthesizer), Twiggy Ramirez (guitar, bass, synthesizer), John5 (guitar), M.W. Gacy (piano, Mellotron, keyboards, synthesizer), Ginger Fish (drums).

Additional personnel: Zim Zum (guitar, beinhorn, synthesizer), Dave Navarro (guitar), Danny Saber (strings, Clavinet, programming), DJ Neil Strauss (scratches), Kobi Tai, Dyanna Lauren, John West, Lyn Davis, Nikki Harris, Alexandra Brown (background vocals).

Producers: Michael Beinhorn, Marilyn Manson, Sean Beavan.

"The Dope Show" was nominated for the 1999 Grammy Award for Best Hard Rock Performance.

Personnel: Marilyn Manson (vocals, piano, synthesizer, ARP synthesizer, vocoder, background vocals), Ginger Fish (vocals, vocoder, drums), Rose McGowan (vocals), Zim Zum (guitar, acoustic guitar, keyboards, guitar synthesizer), Twiggy Ramirez (guitar, acoustic guitar, electric bass), John 5 (guitar), Madonna Wayne Gacy (piano, Mellotron, keyboards, synthesizer, drums, shaker, sampler), Danny Saber (keyboards), Sean Beavan (programming), Alexandra Brown, Kobi Tai, Nikki Harris, John West, Lynn Davis (background vocals).

Audio Mixer: Tom Lord-Alge.

Recording information: Conway Studios, Westlake, White Room.

Editor: Sean Beavan.

Photographers: Joseph Cultice, Marilyn Manson.

Approaching the new millennium, Marilyn Manson shows himself to be standing squarely at the crossroads of the past and future of popular music. MECHANICAL ANIMALS takes the crunch and shock of '70s glam rock and mates it with the automated pings and electronic sheen of artists such as the Dust Brothers and Danny Saber (who both appear on this album). Manson's knack for going light years beyond Alice Cooper's brand of shock rock starts with the packaging itself. On it, the freaky Floridian appears as an asexual being with flaming red eyes and hair (whose appearance is not unlike a cross between David Bowie's Aladdin Sane and Diamond Dogs characters).

The music itself not only assaults the senses but a variety of targets as well. Naturally enough, the Religious Right is a convenient whipping boy ("Rock Is Dead"), as are back-stabbers ("Speed Of Pain") and the beast that is the media ("New Model No. 15," "The Dope Show"). When Manson isn't smashing you in the mouth with a crashing wall of guitars and new wavey synths, his instincts lead him into late-Floydian nihilism ("The Speed Of Pain") and hi-NRG ditties tailor-made for an imaginary sci-fi disco ("Posthuman," "I Want To Disappear").