One of the most underrated albums ever. A primal mixture of the industrial-influenced, prog-rock snatching alternative that he had expounded from Portrait Of An American Family through Antichrist Superstar going headfirst into the glamorous world of David Bowie, T. Rex and the pretty world of The Cure. An album about disassociation ("We all live in a great big white world/and we are drained of our colors/we used to love ourselves/we used to love one another"), love ("I know it's the last day on Earth/we'll be together while the planet dies"), pain ("A manic queen of depression/with the face of a dead star"), and in the last few moments, becoming lost in the world ("But all the drugs in this world/won't save her from herself"). All set to what's easily the best music Brian Warner's ever had committed to tape. It's all build-up and release, like only the best punk albums are able to do -- as well as the best pop songs do -- and Warner/Manson is able to cover it spectacularly. Jeordie White (the bassist formerly known as Twiggy Ramirez) had a definite influence and input into the album, for the first and last time in his career with the band. The complex interplay of most every instrument on the album is hard to recall occuring very often in the last ten years; while barnburner rock songs like "Rock Is Dead" (an orphan of a single saved by it's use over the credits of the original Matrix movie) come off as playfully simple, Wall-of-Sound like creations such as the title track, the techno-meets-Devo-meets-NIN rumble of "The Last Day On Earth" and the closing song's almost Kansas-like acoustic playfulness are all intricate pieces of patchwork -- more difficult to catch than you'd expect from a man who's first hit was a remake of "Sweet Dreams" from Eurythmics, but somewhere in this album, you see the sweet payoff that cover had for him.
The story of Mechanical Animals, and there is one deep within, is of a dual nature. At once, it's a story of the sudden change in fame and money and expectation from the world, with Manson playing the young ingenue who's suddenly been offered a galaxy's load of drugs, women, and money to do things for other people. This is the surface story, one that's eerily reminiscent of most every band who are on their sophomore album, not one that is on their fourth. It does not flag the album as something less than it is, though -- Manson manages to clear away the cliches as our young ingenue finds love and loses it within the connecting silence between "The Last Day On Earth" and "Coma White".
Yet, deeper, this is merely a part of a bigger story, told first in Antichrist Superstar and wrapped up in Holy Wood (in the shadow of the valley of death). Quite possibly one of the strangest and most discombobulated stories a rock star has ever put to record, there is apparently two people in this story -- or at least two personalities. One is Adam/Alpha, the character continued on from Antichrist, who has been deposited on Earth (after being kicked out of Heaven, thus "Great Big White World") and is immediately snatched at by humanity as a star ("The Dope Show"). As the shy, introverted Adam/Alpha falls into the world of drugs and sex ("Mechanical Animals", "The Speed of Pain"), he becomes Omega, the complete opposite (Omega's first clarified appearance on the album is "I Want To Disappear", with the lines "Look at me now/got no religion/look at me now/I'm so vacant/look at me now/I was a virgin/look at me now/grew up to be a whore"). This introduces him to a lady, Coma White, as he begins to suffer severe depression ("New Model No. 15", "User Friendly"), who -- besides the fact that there's no true love between them -- brings him out of his Omega shell as Adam/Alpha again ("Fundamentally Loathsome"), brings him hope, and then abandons him.
Which, apparently, according to how the story of Holy Wood goes, leads him into insanity and death.
Even if none of this subtext was laid underneath, though -- Mechanical Animals would still stand out as the best album Marilyn Manson would ever release, and far and away the best album of 1998. It's just damn well-written and played.
just a little bit.