Born Villain (2012)
If nothing else, this is the heaviest the band have sounded in years – The High End Of Low had it’s heavier moments, but this is much more of an Industrial Metal album. There aren’t exactly any new ideas brought in here, but there’s sort of a fusion of their “new” and “old” styles that makes it feel more satisfying than recent efforts: Manson is still primarily doing the croaky croon thing, but he’ll let out a few strategically placed screams here and there, and there’s still definite traces of glam and goth rock, but they’re balanced out with much more prominent loud guitars. There’s also a subtle return to Golden Age Of Grotesque-era groove here, or at least there’s generally more emphasis on the low-end.
Unfortunately, some of the energy may be back, but the songwriting often isn't. First single “No Reflection” has probably their most arena-ready chorus in recent memory, and “Lay Down Your Goddamn Arms” has an excellent stoner rock verse riff (which oddly makes me think of Soundgarden’s Batmotorfinger), but elsewhere slow tempos and reliance on the loud-quiet-loud formula make the songs start to feel interchangeable after a while. Still, this is the first time in a while they’ve played the heavier stuff like their hearts were in it, and that’s an encouraging sign.
Oh, and I’m giving this its own paragraph because it’s a bonus track, but there’s a return to the tradition of unlikely covers – a version of Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain” that apparently features Johnny Depp. I kind of wanted to dislike the song on principle, even when I realized it’s most likely a belated, sarcastic response to Nine Inch Nails’ “Starfuckers, Inc”, which was of course a Take That! to Manson that quoted the Carly Simon version in its bridge. However, while I was anticipating either a smirk-fest or an embarrassing attempt to make the song Darker and Edgier, it’s really neither – the arrangement fits the rest of the album perfectly, and it’s clearly a tongue-in-cheek choice in material, but it’s not that far off from the original in terms of tone and melody. It’s almost as though the idea of covering the song was brought up as a joke, but then they started learning how to play it and realized it’s actually a pretty good song.
Key Tracks: No Reflection, Lay Down Your Goddamn Arms
