There is a point in One Assassination Under God – Chapter 2 where the language of survival finally becomes the language of retaliation. “The Arsonist” is that point. The song is not simply about having survived an attempt to destroy you. It is about what happens afterward, when the person who has been burned decides that the fire did not finish him and that the scars it left behind have become part of his strength. Manson himself described the song as the moment when the narrative of the two chapters “crystallizes into a battle stance,” and, referring to the painting he created for it, said that the “burned scar tissue” had formed into armor. That description gets very close to the heart of the song. The fire has not disappeared. It has changed him. The title is important because Manson does not call the song The Survivor or The Victim . He calls it "The Arsonist." An arsonist deliberately starts a fire, and this changes the entire perspective of the song. The speaker is no...
Metal Injection Readers Choose Marilyn Manson's "One Assassination Under God – Chapter 1" for Album of the Year 2024
About a week ago, Metal Injection, an online music publication focusing on hard rock and heavy metal, issued a list of their top 25 albums of 2024, and around the same time opened up a poll for their readers to choose from a long list of albums that came out over the past year. On December 17th the results of their poll came in, and Marilyn Manson's One Assassination Under God – Chapter 1 came out on top of a list of twenty albums. This is interesting especially in light of Metal Injection's official list, which didn't even have Manson in their top 25.