Marilyn Manson
Holy Wood
Nothing/Interscope
Rating: 2.5 Flaming Goat Heads
Attempting to drive yet another nail of realistic thinking into religion's coffin, Manson closes his CD trilogy in a less than climactic manner. Veering back and forth between 3-minute upbeat, anthem rockers and long, dull dirges, few of Holy Wood's 19 songs have enough unique character to stand out. The relatively simplistic songwriting is masked by a dizzying array of electronic noises and layers, but the redundancy of Manson's important message takes away from its effectiveness. Hopefully, the 33 lyrical references to god (uncapitalized) will give the religious freaks he's trying to rile enough pro-God/con-Manson press release fodder to keep them busy long enough for Manson to begin tackling other subjects on future albums. Songs like "President Dead" and "Target Audience" manage to stray back to the Manson trilogy's theme of how a social icon can be manipulated and/or ruined by the lure of fame and greed or the influence of government, religion or television - albeit with surprisingly uninteresting musical accompaniment. The use of ambient-recorded drums is refreshing, but Holy Wood's mix of heavy guitars with studio sonics is old hat - one that Manson appears reluctant to remove from his highly-targeted head.
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