Swapping out the occult death rock of prior album Antichrist Superstar for Bowie-influenced synthetic glam fused with up-scale industrial rock, with themes of drugs, space, alienation, and commercialization, Mechanical Animals finds Marilyn Manson taking on the MTV culture as its own aesthetic and fuel.  Taking on an extra persona as a rock star from outer space, ‘Omēga,’ in a riff on David Bowie’s role in The Man Who Fell to Earth, Manson digs through the hollowing effects of Hollywood, and while the near-deification of performing idols is put to good musical use, nothing of much substance is said on the subject.

The spacy motifs and glam trappings do allow for more decompressed songs than before, like the move from an acoustic guitar intro into an assemblage of drums, backing soul vocalists, and synths in “The Speed of Pain”.  The album also plays with tailoring the songs more to sing-along structuring, in contrast to the didactic assaults of the previous album, as shown in “Posthuman” or the explicitly-titled “User Friendly”, and both developments come together in the sprawling “I Don’t Like the Drugs (But the Drugs Like Me)”. 

The biggest downside is the detachment of the narrative voice from common experience as a result of its preoccupation with celebrity spheres, something it almost seems to recognize at times, e.g., the lines “Yesterday, man, I was a nihilist / Now, today, I’m just a fucking bore” in “I Want to Disappear”.  Additionally, the willingness to reach outside of the familiar in the song-writing at times, as with the inclusion of the female backing singers in a couple of the songs, makes the ‘safer’ songs seem all the more insular and limited.  As a platinum-selling homage to Bowie’s chameleon-like persona changes, it’s impressive, but as a stand-alone album, it rings a bit hollow, mainly due to its self-interest overwhelming outside connections.

Here’s the limited edition cover art.