Marilyn Manson Comes to Prague
By Kathleen Kralowec

When Marilyn Manson returns to the spotlight, it's always as a new
species. Four years since his last major album, "The Golden Age of the
Grotesque," which marked an intense mixture of glam-rock-elements,
hard rock and baroque deconstruction, Manson is back with his new
album "Eat Me Drink Me," which marks an even more fine-tuned blend of
agro and glitter rock, charged with an equally more pointed
exploration of the painful themes this artist ruthlessly exposes to
the spotlight with every incarnation. Manson is due to play in Prague
at the Trade Fair Palace in Prague on June 13 2007.

Loved as intensely as he is despised, Marilyn Manson is a name which
is guaranteed a strong reaction every time it's uttered, though you
can never predict whether it will be positive or negative. Having
started out thoroughly embedded in the underground scene with a tiny
following, Manson has now risen close to the level of celebrity shared
by other universally known stars, though he remains the darkest and
most perplexing figure amongst them. His music revolves around
criticism of society, and his lyrics resonate with a sickness which is
meant to directly reflect the sickness he finds in mass society.
Originally from a small town on the Bible Belt, Manson's childhood has
left him full of disturbing images and sickening situations from which
he draws much of his inspiration, as well as distrust of society. "Eat
Me Drink Me" promises to be the most searing confrontation of these
memories to date, presenting us with a darkly cathartic trip down a
Memory Lane.

With every album, Manson takes on a different aspect of modern
society, coming closer and closer to a more and more refined and
pointed criticism of American society, consumerism and celebrity
deification. Through his irony and twisted form of humor, he also
takes on the sinister ways in which televised seduction, Bible Belt
Christianity and pop optimism cover up, deny, ignore and thus sneakily
promote hatred, torture and passion crimes. His demented visions of
the dark side of the American Dream, the ideal "American Family"
lifestyle, the mass media, pop heroes, childhood entertainment and the
shallow pleasures a consumerist system offers. Through these
uncomfortable images, Manson stands up as the tortured witness to the
wickedness of which these distractions are capable, and asks that we
not pursue these attractions blindly, and blindly accept them as
somehow "good" and worthy of our trust, and that we not follow our
heroes at the expense of our more authentic needs, identities and
capacity for awareness.

Manson has been called at different times shock-rocker, mad
philosopher, Satanist, glam-rocker, poser, Devil worshipper, and the
world's most misunderstood artist. What with his drastic and ongoing
transformations in style, persona and focus of critique, he has
shocked both fans to enemies alike, and confused the mass media
repeatedly with his surprising eloquence and capacity to be
personable.

While cloaked in darkness throughout, Manson's recent albums have in
common that they begin and end in tragedy—the tragedy being the
sacrifice of the individual, whose uniqueness stands out against, and
is far more precious than, any of the worthless gains which society
propels us to value. In these dark and reality-inspired tales, this
uniqueness is eliminated, either spiritually or literally, in favor of
petty and artificial desires, by a hateful and single-minded society
whose self-regulation kills its own worth. The heroes of Manson's
cosmos are villains to society for standing outside the parameters
which media, stars and leaders formulate for us, for breaking unspoken
rules and most of all for not caring that they do. Manson expresses
the tragedy of the suppression of such a figure non-stop, and this
message will strike a chord of truth in anyone who can bear the
harshness of the medium.

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