Manson Goes "Gold"

"We have now entered the Golden Age of Grotesque," announces Marilyn Manson on his official Web site, announcing the title of his next opus. The Golden Age of the Grotesque will be Manson's sixth studio album and follow-up to 2000's Holy Wood (In the Shadow of the Valley of Death).

Manson, Ben Gross and Tim Skold are producing the album, which Manson describes as a "genius deluge of hardcore guitar-drum violence and reckless electronic-punk vaudeville mixed with Thirties cabaret decadence and Arch-dandy dada."

For inspiration, Manson took a historical perspective, looking back to Germany in the 1930s and finding "historic parallels to my own present position in popular culture. Most notably, I found myself fascinated with the overwhelming imaginative, sexually depraved artistic chaos that just bled from some of history's greatest minds as Berlin reached its creative extreme peak. The unfortunate onset of rigid control and conformity that brought Berlin to its fiery end seemed to almost mirror today's less violent, but equally ignorant censorship and fear of 'dangerous' art."

As for Manson's own "dangerous art," he says, "These snot-nose stompalongs will convince the finger-waving, faithless bangsters one thing for sure: We can only become what we really are when we no longer believe what others have convinced us to be. We won't follow religion, we are one. And the understanding of my art is only the sad product of journalism. Fuck art. I am art."

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Song Stories

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MGMT | 2008

Listening to MGMT’s breakthrough song, one might interpret it as being about the excesses of rock stardom, but it’s actually about the duo’s pet praying mantis. Ben Goldwasser and Andrew VanWyngarden told Rolling Stone they got the idea from the insect's jerky movements. The mantis died, but the two bandmates kept the egg sack and allowed the hundreds of eggs to hatch. “We tried to name them all, but they died after a day,” said Goldwasser, with VanWyngarden chiming in, “But the praying mantis dance inspired us.”

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