Marilyn Manson’s latest album ‘WE ARE CHAOS’ has debuted at #8 on the Billboard Top 200. This album marks Manson’s eighth consecutively to reach the Top 10 on the Billboard Top 200. Internationally, WE ARE CHAOS debuted Top 10 in several countries. The album is produced by Manson and GRAMMY® Award winner Shooter Jennings [Brandi Carlile, Tanya Tucker] and includes previously released singles “WE ARE CHAOS”.
Manson releases the video for “DON’T CHASE THE DEAD”, which stars Manson alongside Norman Reedus.
Next up is this in the studio recording from The Bloodstrings. “Heavy Cross is something we should have written a long time ago”, says Celina, singer of the band that has been playing worldwide tours including legendary festivals like Wacken in Germany or Rebellion in England.
“It is about being a woman in the music industry or in society itself. It is about being treated differently, being sexualized. Every woman knows the feeling of having to defend herself in her job, in her relationship or in her everyday life. I personally have been treated different than my male band mates on shows and festivals and that song is a clear statement against that.”
The song, originally written to be a feature on the next album of The Bloodstrings, was part of a series of live sessions that also included a cover-song of The Interrupters hit “Gave You Everything”. The Bloodstrings are going new ways with their sound: They founded the band as a horrorbilly/trash-punk band and made their way through different influences, eventually ending up with a unique style of pop-punk meets rock n roll meets alt-rock.
Finally, the third video we bring is ‘War’ the opening cut from the new Idles album – Enjoy.
Given the title of Marilyn Manson’s eleventh studio record you’d half expect it to be an inexorable sonic fist in the face, perhaps even harking back to the fury and anger of his ‘Antichrist Superstar’ days. But think again, because ‘We Are Chaos’ is a body of work designed to challenge and confound listeners, and in fact after numerous listens it actually takes me back to the days of ‘Mechanical Animals’, and a time when screams of ‘SELL OUT’ could be detected from within the more hardcore element of the Manson family.
I suppose discovering that this ten tracker (you get two extra acoustic tracks on the deluxe CD) was being co-produced by Shooter Jennings should have given the more astute Manson fan some indication that that this would be anything but a “by numbers” record (something that perhaps could be levelled at MM’s last two studio records) and on first hearing the acoustic driven title track via the obligatory teaser lyric video I was certainly intrigued to hear more.
Kicking off with the part spoken word ‘Red Black And Blue’ this is without question the most old school Manson sounding track contained herein. The spoken word intro making about as much sense as Manson’s (almost Cantona-essque) press releases these days, it’s not long before the trademark staccato rhythms are banging away at my brain and I can just see the self-styled God Of Fuck screaming his lungs out draped over the lightbox/monitor stage front and centre. Oh, for a live gig though eh?
One of the funniest things I read online in the run up to the album’s September 11th release date was that the title track reminded one listener of an eighties charity single, it’s a comment I simply cannot get out of my head never mind how many times I have subsequently listened to it, so maybe just maybe it is just that, a cry for help in our troubled times, and perhaps something we can all reflect upon.
‘We Chase The Dead’ is up next and this is for me is where the album truly slips into gear, a huge slice of gothic pop, this beauty segues perfectly into the anthemic ‘70s melancholia of ‘Paint You With My Love’ and thus truly submerges you within the qualities of the album as an art form.
This rich vein of songwriting form continues within the Satanic funtime grooves of ‘Perfume’, the prophetic electronic blitz of ‘Infinite Darkness’, which once again touches on the raw Manson nerve endings of old, whilst the down beat ‘Half-Way And One Step Forward’ and ‘Solve Coagula’ perhaps best illustrate what Marilyn means when he says that “shards and slivers of ghosts haunted my hands when I wrote most of these lyrics”.
The epic ‘Broken Needle’ closes things down and this once again acoustic lead track actually has me checking it is Marilyn Manson I’m listening to and not in fact 90s indie rockers Mansun. That’s because like I said at the top of this review ‘We Are Chaos’ is an album that in equal measure will challenge and confound you but thankfully it will not disappoint you.
Oh, and before I sign off, ‘We Are Chaos’ is also a concept album. Good luck figuring that one out.
Marilyn Manson announces the release of his eleventh studio album WE ARE CHAOS out September 11 via Loma Vista Recordings. Co-produced by Manson and GRAMMY® Award winner Shooter Jennings [Brandi Carlile, Tanya Tucker], the ten-track opus was written, recorded, and finished before a pandemic blanketed us all. Manson heralds the record’s arrival with the title track and lead single “WE ARE CHAOS,” released today. The accompanying video is directed, photographed and edited by Matt Mahurin.
Manson’s painting, Infinite Darkness, which can be seen on the album cover, was specifically created to accompany the music. His fine art paintings continue to be shown all over the world, including gallery and museum exhibitions from Miami to Vienna to Moscow.
Manson says of the album, “When I listen to WE ARE CHAOS now, it seems like just yesterday or as if the world repeated itself, as it always does, making the title track and the stories seem as if we wrote them today. This was recorded to its completion without anyone hearing it until it was finished. There is most definitely a side A and side B in the traditional sense. But just like an LP, it is a flat circle and it’s up to the listener to put the last piece of the puzzle into the picture of songs.
“This concept album is the mirror Shooter and I built for the listener – it’s the one we won’t stare into. There are so many rooms, closets, safes and drawers. But in the soul or your museum of memories, the worst are always the mirrors. Shards and slivers of ghosts haunted my hands when I wrote most of these lyrics.
“Making this record, I had to think to myself: ‘Tame your crazy, stitch your suit. And try to pretend that you are not an animal’but I knew that mankind is the worst of them all. Making mercy is like making murder. Tears are the human body’s largest export.”
The third video from ‘beauty re-envisioned’. This NEW version of the T. REX classic features the late Marc Bolan’s son, Rolan Bolan on lead vocals along with The Mission UK’s main-man Wayne Hussey.
Rolan Bolan: lead vocals
Wayne Hussey: guitar and harmony vocals
Michael Ciravolo: guitar, vocals
Tish Ciravolo: bass
Michael Rozon: drums
Scarlett Perry: piano
LA-based collective Beauty in Chaos presents their new single ’20th Century Boy’ feat. Rolan Bolan and Wayne Hussey, with a fun-filled retro-inspired video, created by Industrialism Films and directed by Vicente Cordero. Here Bolan onoring the legacy of his father Marc Bolan, along with The Mission’s main-man and Beauty in Chaos mastermind Michael Ciravolo.
This track is off the new Beauty in Chaos album ‘Beauty Re-Envisioned’. This rendition definitely sounds more like T.Rex than the industrial-fueled version featuring Ministry’s Al Jourgensen that appears on Beauty In Chaos’s debut ‘Finding Beauty in Chaos’.
“Once Rolan (son of Marc Bolan and singer Gloria Jones) agreed to be part of this, I wanted to recut the track with much more of the sultry swagger from the original. We added a growly sax and some cool Mott the Hoople meets New Orleans honkey-tonk piano to enhance the vibe we wanted. I probably would not be playing electric guitar if it was not for Marc Bolan. This is my big thank you … and I have been blessed to be able to enlist some great company to help me say it,” says Michael Ciravolo.
“Getting to record and perform this song with Marc’s son and Wayne Hussey is one of those oft-mentioned surreal moments in BIC.”
Rolan Bolan explains his involvement in the project: “When Michael came to me about Beauty In Chaos and doing ‘20th Century Boy’ , I first thought ‘here we go again, another T. Rex cover, but once I heard the track and talked with him about the love and respect he has for my father’s music it just made sense. It was great timing for me as I was just beginning to get back into making music and we just clicked in the studio. My Dad was so influential to so many, and at times it’s been hard for me to understand what that really means. I’m really proud of what we’ve done here and I believe he would be too.”
“It is, of course, a huge pleasure to be playing guitar and singing on ‘20th Century Boy’, one of Marc Bolan’s best-known songs. And a transcendent honour to be doing so behind Rolan Bolan, Marc’s son. When Michael Ciravolo told me that Rolan was going to be involved I virtually begged Michael to let me be involved in this project. Bless him, despite being more than capable of handling all the guitar parts himself Michael did deign to let me have a strum, and a yodel, along. There’s another one off my bucket list! Cheers, Michael. And Rolan,” says Wayne Hussey.
Hussey’s love for T. Rex and Marc Bolan runs deep, as detailed in his recently released ‘Salad Daze’ autobiography, out now via Omnibus Press.
“I was reborn. It was a Thursday evening, early January 1972, getting on for 8pm. I was 13 going on 14 years old. That evening the course of my life was changed irrevocably forever. I saw my destiny in a blinding flash of glitter, a touch of mascara and dark curls. From that moment I knew I was pre-ordained. I was gonna be a rock star. Well, somebody has to be, don’t they, so why not me?
I had just watched Marc Bolan and T. Rex dazzle the nation on the institutional British TV show, Top Of The Pops. Miming to ‘Telegram Sam’, the new number one single in the charts, Bolan pranced and preened across our TV screens and straight into the hearts of teens, dividing the generations for perhaps the first time since The Beatles had done so almost ten years before.
That was it for me. In one fell swoop I no longer wanted to be Kevin Keegan, I wanted to be Marc Bolan. Bolan had better hair than Keegan and was far prettier. It looked like a really good job to me, playing guitar and singing, being on TV and being screamed at by girls. And even some boys. And a darn sight more agreeable and easier than all the dedication, training and physical exercise required to become a professional footballer.
Switching allegiances as easy as finding sand in a desert, down came my posters of Keegan, Ray Clemence, Tommy Smith (!) et al and up went centre page pull-outs from Jackie and Disco 45 of dear beloved Marc. Marc Bolan was my first and, still to this day, an enduring love.
I was T. Rex crazy and, like a million other kids, I would pose in front of the mirror with a tennis racket, pretending to play guitar while singing along to Bolan. The first LP I ever bought was Electric Warrior, maybe a month or two later after saving up enough money from my paper round wages. Electric Warrior is a fantastic album and it’s still high on my list of best albums ever. I love the earthiness of its sound, the funkiness, the otherworldly mystical lyrics, the simplicity of the songs, the instrumentation, the guitar playing, the backing vocals of Howard Kaylan and Mark Volman (better known as The Turtles), but most of all, it’s that voice, that extraordinarily fey, quivering, tactile Bolan voice that just oozes sexual exuberance.”
Beauty in Chaos’ also involves numerous other music luminaries, including Simon Gallup (The Cure), Al Jourgensen (Ministry), Ashton Nyte (The Awakening), Robin Zander (Cheap Trick), Pete Parada (The Offspring), dUg Pinnick (Kings X), ICE-T (Body Count), producer Tim Palmer, guitar icon Zakk Wylde, Kevin Haskins (Bauhaus, Love & Rockets), Michael Aston (Gene Loves Jezebel), Michael Anthony (Van Halen), Paul Wiley (Marilyn Manson), Dirk Doucette (Gene Loves Jezebel), Pando (A Flock of Seagulls), Evi Vine, Johnny Indovina (Human Drama), Danny Lohner (Nine Inch Nails, Marilyn Manson), Betsy Martin (Caterwaul / Purr Machine), Marc Danzeisen (The Riverdogs), Kevin Kipnis (Purr Machine / Kommunity FK), Rudy Matchinga (Red Scare), and Tish Ciravolo (StunGun/ Daisy Rock Guitars).
‘Beauty Re-Envisioned’ is available on deluxe CD, limited-edition heavy-weight colored vinyl, and digitally, with a Spotifyversion to appear later. CDs and vinyl can be ordered directly from Beauty in Chaos at www.beautyinchaosmusic.com/music-store. Apart from the 14 core tracks, orders placed via the website also come with 11 bonus remixes.
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