Song of the Week #21
It may shock and amaze you to learn that we plan most of the songs ahead of time that are going to be released on each Song of the Week unless something really takes our fancy in the build up to each Friday release. As much as I would love to, I don’t have the timing (or willpower) to perfectly pluck a devilish tune from the air and type up a few paragraphs over every Friday lunchtime in order to meet the 4pm scheduling deadline. Instead, I keep a list of potential candidates for songs on a note on my phone, and whenever I hear something and think “yeah this could really fucking work” I add it onto the list. Trust me, this is for your own good, otherwise you’d be hearing a lot more Wu Tang Clan and Cher than would be sensible in the year 2021.
However, when I saw that the scheduling for this Song of the Week fell onto the Friday before Halloween weekend, I knew there was only one real choice - and surprisingly no, it isn’t going to be Slipknot, Mushroomhead or any bands that dress up and wear masks. Being that this weekend is dedicated to witches, demons and everything that satanist dreams are made of, we at Sinner’s had to roll out the most famous satanist of all.
These days he’s more well known for gasping from oxygen tanks on stage, delivering mediocre-at-best live performances, and the legions of alternative girls that end up scribbling “Manson’s slut” on their chests in sharpie (trust me, I’ve seen it on multiple occasions), but there was a time and place when Marilyn Manson was the poster boy of everything that could go wrong when children listened to rock and metal music. The cocaine-snorting, hedonistic rock icon was unsurprisingly vilified as an antichrist by the US media when you combine his music of the 90s with the outrageous public image he sported.
At the time before social media & widespread internet access he would simply let rumours build rather than deny anything, allowing everything to snowball and in turn increase his notoriety, and attract those who would listen to his music and go to the shows. When combined together it would all seem a bit paradoxical to be married to burlesque queen Dita Von Teese, have a sex change into a woman, and yet also have some ribs surgically removed so that you could give yourself a blow job onstage. Alas, its stories like this that are exactly how Marilyn Manson became one of the biggest rockstars on planet earth. When you work with a public persona like that, the music is almost forfeit at that point - you’re going to attract the weirdos anyway.
I used to be a big Marilyn Manson fan in my teens, buying into the imagery of the occult, the unusual and the downright odd. Amazingly I did enjoy the music very much, and still go on a listen from time to time. Unfortunately however, despite each of them having a few good songs, I would advise against listening to any albums in full that followed The High End of Low.
I was actually tempted to use one of the songs from a latter album to prove that his career isn’t yet completely forfeit, but with it being the combination of Halloween weekend and Marilyn Manson, there was only one choice. It had to be something that embraced everything that we love and stand for at Sinner’s Gin. From 2000’s Holy Wood - the Fight song.
From myself and Alex, we hope you all get your best slasher films on tomorrow and enjoy your weekend!