Eat it, Drink it, but whatever you do make sure you have enough antacid on hand
I’m not sure how many years have elapsed since Golden Age of Grotesque but in that time Marilyn Manson has gotten married, alienated roughly half of his band, cryptically hinted at directing two films based on nineteenth century literary properties, gotten divorced, lent his name to his own brand of absinthe, reconnected with one of his ostracized bandmates, introduced the weirdo guitarist from Limp Bizkit as his new guitarist and basically done everything but record an album. So it was much to everyone’s shock when radio stations began playing the first single from the record, Heart Shaped Glasses. Which when you think about it is the first thing Rev. Manson has done to genuinely shock people in almost a decade.
There was once a day when I’d have pounced on a new Marilyn Manson album the day it hit streets. But with everything I’d heard from and about the record I put it off for months. And I’ll freely admit that a friend just sent me a zip file of the thing because I couldn’t justify paying for it. In terms of creativity Eat Me, Drink Me falls somewhere in the realm of Golden Age and Holywood, Manson’s two typically agreed upon flops. It seems I’m pretty much the only person who actually liked Golden Age. It was (at least until recently) my opinion that Holywood was his most lackluster effort. But Eat Me, Drink Me has so little soul it makes the aforementioned look like the Beatles fucking White Album! Believe me, I’m not just saying this to be inflammatory or to come up with the perfect soundbite. This is without a doubt the most self-indulgent, yawn-inducing, morose slap in the face I have ever listened to. Ever.
The record starts off with If I Was Your Vampire which itself is not exactly an enthusiastic barn-burner but at least has some teeth to it (if you’ll forgive the pun) and then leads into Putting Holes In Happiness and the equally downbeat and very Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers-esque Red Carpet Grave. And this depressing motif continues on through They Said Hell’s Not Hot and Just a Car Crash Away . The common theme that I seem to be getting from this album – as we all know Manson is a big proponent of the concept album – is his love/hate relationship with stardom and how the glitz and glamour steal your soul and leave you an empty shell. The problem is that any sympathy the listener might have felt for him has dwindled to nothing with all the tales of Manson’s epic jackassery.
The proceedings regain a little bit of momentum after the disposable Heart Shaped Glasses with the album’s real stand-out track, You and Me and the Devil Makes 3. It’s a throbbing, trudging anthem that almost instantly transports the listener to one of the many thousands of strip clubs that I’m sure have the song on heavy rotation on a nightly basis. But testament to Eat Me, Drink Me‘s jarring inconsistency the pace grinds to a screeching and very final halt on the album’s title track.
The musicianship itself may not exactly be inspired (no doubt having to do with the myriad lineup changes) but it’s still passable. The lion’s share of the negatives lie with Manson’s own performance. Here Manson affects his best post-Tin Machine David Bowie impression to mostly unremarkable but occasionally disastrous consequences. His vocals, perhaps reflecting the sense of deflated desperation he wants so badly for us to perceive, are flat and monotone and ultimately hollow. For the most part he doesn’t even evoke enough aural punch to recall Tubeway Army-era Gary Numan.
I may dislike Manson as a person but I’ve always loved his music for that exact reason. However the sad, sad poet hat doesn’t fit him. There can be no question that this is Manson’s most personal album but in that it’s a document of an ignorant misanthrope and unrepentant antagonist pondering aloud why he has no friends in this world. Less than revealing how far he’s come Eat Me, Drink Me shows just how far he has yet to go before he reaches a plateau of musical maturity that elevates him to something more than an interesting footnote in rock music’s history. I want him to get back to his trademark debauchery and own up to his absolute corruption and experiment with developing a conscience on his own time.