Marilyn Manson Uncanceled

When Marilyn Manson's One Assassination Under God – Chapter 2 debuted at No. 41 on the Billboard 200, Forbes described the result as a new career low for the controversial musician. In terms of the Billboard 200 itself, that description is accurate. Chapter 2 became Manson's first traditional studio album since his debut to miss the Top 40, falling one position short of the threshold that every other regular studio album had reached since Portrait of an American Family . His previous album, One Assassination Under God – Chapter 1 , had reached No. 32 in 2024, while We Are Chaos had reached No. 8 in 2020. It would therefore be pointless to argue that the No. 41 position somehow does not represent a decline. It plainly does. What deserves closer examination, however, is what that decline actually tells us about Manson's audience and his current position within the music industry, because the Billboard 200 is only one measurement of an album's performance. When the oth...

There are certain people who have remained in Marilyn Manson's corner even when doing so was neither easy nor particularly popular. Sharon Osbourne has been one of them, which is why her recent comments about Manson on The Osbournes podcast caught my attention. It is not simply that Sharon defended him again. She was unusually direct about what she believes, why she believes it, and why her opinion of him has not changed. During a conversation with her son Jack Osbourne, Manson came up while they were discussing music and some of the darker personalities Sharon has known throughout her career. Sharon did not hesitate when the subject turned to Manson. “Manson is a great artist,” she said, before responding to the criticism that would inevitably follow because of the allegations that have been made against him. Sharon pointed out that “women abuse men” as well, and argued that Manson had never presented himself as someone who was “light and breezy” or simply an ordinary rock star. ...

  “None of the Suns” is 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 does not s...

  “All the Vilest Things” initially sounds like a song about retaliation. The speaker has been attacked, wounded, and subjected to things that were intended to destroy him, and much of the language is deliberately violent. Yet Manson's own explanation points in a different direction. He describes the song as being about “balancing your resentments” and determining the proper measure of punishment in matters of war. More importantly, he says that the song provides “a real balance to the idea of vengeance.” The lyrics suggest that this balance comes from recognizing the damage that has been done without allowing the desire for revenge to become the thing that defines what happens next. The opening establishes the situation immediately: “You tried your best To destroy me I don't want revenge Because you only Made me stronger.” There is no attempt to minimize what happened. The speaker acknowledges that someone genuinely tried to destroy him. What changes is his response t...

When I first wrote about “Front Toward Enemy” in 2024, there was still a great deal we did not know about the song. It had appeared as one of the additional tracks on the Raise the Red Flag  single release, but One Assassination Under God – Chapter 2 was still in the future. At that point, I saw the song primarily as an aggressive statement about fighting back against those who had tried to bring Manson down. There were also hints that the “enemy” could be something more complicated than another person: the rules and expectations imposed by others, the destructive forces within oneself, or simply the circumstances that can leave someone feeling trapped. Much of that reading still holds up, but hearing the song within the completed One Assassination Under God  story has changed the emphasis for me. We now have not only the rest of Chapter 2 , but also the music video, Manson's painting which he calls  Savaging , and, most importantly, Manson's own explanation of where som...