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").

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

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.
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").

Initially mentored by Nine Inch Nails mainman Trent Reznor, Marilyn Manson created an accessible, highly successful variant on the former's electronic-tinged industrial rock. Manson took shock-rock to a whole new plateau in the late-1990s, influenced by past theatrical rockers like Kiss, Alice Cooper, and Motley Crue--and not since the days of those bands had religious and parental groups despised a rock group so much. Of course, the resulting controversy endowed Marilyn Manson with publicity and album sales in equally vast amounts. Although Manson talked about retiring from the music biz after the release of his 2004 album, he came back refreshed in 2007 with EAT ME DRINK ME, inspired by his crumbling marriage to Dita Von Teese.