Artist: Marilyn Manson
CD: Lest We Forget: The Best of 
Label: Nothing
Rating:

Marilyn Manson has successfully taken the shock rock template as perfected by Alice Cooper and KISS and updated it for the kids of today, adding some Bowie-esque glam and Trent Reznor-style techno-gloom for good measure. As an image maker, mood creator, and music video star, Manson is A-list all the way, sculpting a powerful persona that he is able to update and tweak with every release. However, as a songwriter, he leaves much to be desired. Sure, Manson has a few genuinely good tunes, but much of his material is simply tired rehashes of the same shtick Reznor and The Coop did better years ago, set to modern-day dance-metal. Good, but not great. His new greatest hits CD, Lest We Forget: The Best of, demonstrates this perfectly.

On hits like “Dope Show,” “Beautiful People,” and “Disposable Teens,” Manson takes repetitive but effective riffs and choruses and beats you over the head with his messages of utopian authority figures crushing the souls of beautiful but f**ed up teens. He also has a penchant for taking tired covers and breathing new life into them, reworking them as gloomy goth anthems. So Soft Cell’s “Tainted Love” becomes a creepy dirge, and Eurythmics’ “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)” is morphed into… well, an even creepier dirge.

Early rockers like “Lunchbox” and “Rock Is Dead” fit quite comfortably alongside newer tracks like “This Is the New Sh*t,” and do indeed rock quite hard. Unfortunately, tracks like “mOBSCENE,” “Fight Song,” and “Get Your Gunn” become redundant as he continually hits the listener over the head with the same ol’ sound and same ol’ concepts. Yes, yes, we know adults suck, kids rock, and you are sexy but sick. How about giving us a little more insight, huh pal?

The CD also comes with a DVD containing the banned video for “(s)AINT,”  which is appropriately shocking and disturbing. The video, like Manson’s music, tries a little too hard at scaring us. It isn’t enough to dress crazy and make noisy songs with titillating titles these days. The trick is to fuse all that with some actual substance, lyrically or musically. That being said, Manson has clearly proved he has staying power and I have a feeling we have not heard the last of him. Maybe, just maybe, the best is yet to come from this antichrist superstar?

Check out Marilyn Manson when he's interviewed on Electric Playground's episode "A Series Of Select Sequels," which premiers on Nov. 22, 2004.