So, listening to the new Morbid Angel album got me thinking of Florida shock rock outfit Marilyn Manson. Don’t ask me why. You’ll understand on June 7th, 2011. Anyway, it was the first time I thought of Brian Hugh Warner and his band of post-apocalyptic gothic-industrial goons since, well, Mechanical Animals was the highest selling rock album (of the year) at the record store I worked at in college. Kids couldn’t get enough of Warner’s nü-Bowie shtick.
Then, I heard long-time label Interscope dropped Marilyn Manson citing poor sales performance of the group’s 2009 borefest The High End of Low. Since Sanctuary (the label where aging bands spent their geriatric years until it was absorbed into Universal in 2007) is no longer, Nuclear Blast is too low on the label totem pole, and Eagle Records squarely focused on artists who spent the ‘70s/’80s rocking stadiums, Marilyn Manson has evidently landed, with his own imprint Hell Inc., on London-based indie Cooking Vinyl. Interesting.
But not nearly as interesting as recent admissions by members, namely chief Manson himself, classifying the group’s new music as—wait for it—“suicide death metal”. Woah! “Suicide death metal” sounds intense. Like maybe mixing Shining (of the Halmstad variety) with, uh, fellow Floridians Morbid Angel? Now, that could be a cool car crash. Alas, this is Marilyn Manson, a group whose music has flirted with death metal just as much as Ministry batted an eyelash at Tejano, and I’m pretty sure Warner’s understanding of “death metal” may not be analogous to mine, yours, or anyone else’s. Then again, maybe Warner and David Vincent are buds. Fuel for cross-fires, so to speak. Again, you’ll get that reference on June 7th, 2011.
So a, to quote Warner, “very death metal” Marilyn Manson album is counter to Twiggy Ramirez’s own interpretation of the music as “like a little more of a punk rock Mechanical Animals without sounding too pretentious”, but we won’t know if the band who spent most of the ‘90s getting misrepresented youth to wear black nail polish and black pants (where’s JNCO now?) will come close to owning what could be a new sub-genre, Suicidel [sic] Death Metal. Or SBM.
Time always tells doesn’t it?
