“None of the Suns” is probably the most explicitly post-punk and gothic song on One Assassination Under God – Chapter 2 . Its imagery seems almost designed for that genre: demons, blood, darkness, blackness, angels, Heaven, and the disappearance of daylight. Yet the song becomes much more interesting when those images are placed alongside Manson's own explanation of it. He has connected the song to his love of post-punk and goth music, but also to his fascination with Lewis Carroll and Carroll's relationship with nighttime. Manson has described “outrunning daylight” as a way of cheating death, which gives the night a meaning beyond gothic atmosphere. He has also cited Federico Fellini's Toby Dammit as an inspiration for the atmosphere of the song. The painting accompanying the song, which Manson calls “We're in the Black Now,” is his own image caught somewhere between day and night. That may be the most useful place to begin with the song, because the darkness here d...
A Different Kind of Comeback At first glance, Henri Alexander Lévy's music video for Marilyn Manson's "Front Toward Enemy" appears surprisingly restrained. Considering the title and the confrontational tone of the song, one might reasonably expect a visual statement built around warfare, retaliation, or public vindication. Instead, the music video repeatedly turns away from those expectations. It lingers on a child dressed in military attire, a motionless body on an examination table, shelves of psychology books, childhood trophies, playground equipment, and a cabinet filled with carefully arranged artifacts. None of these images directly illustrates the lyrics, yet none of them feels arbitrary. By the time the music video ends, it becomes clear that Lévy is asking the viewer to consider something more complicated than revenge. That immediately distinguishes the video from the song itself. Borrowing its title from the M18A1 Claymore mine, whose front face bears th...