A Personal Shift: Marilyn Manson's 'The High End of Low'

MARILYN MANSON: THE HIGH END OF LOW

SCORE: 80/100

Following the vampiric Eat Me, Drink Me, The High End of Low acts as one of Manson's most personal projects in a time where his artistry was challenged and his ideas were everchanging - after the trials and struggles of fame and the music industry, he had come out of his personal rubbles with this album acting as a personal crutch after suffering from the pains of his divorce from Dita Von Teese, which had led to the more personal and downturned sound of the album. 

Manson described the album as having "extremely autobiographical" lyrical content about both his divorce and his relationship with Evan Rachel Wood, both of which had inspired the cripplingly lovesick and heartsore content of the album. The songs are a violent form of dissolving romance that truly do capture the highest ends of a low break, and it's one of Manson's most deeply challenging albums musically and artistically despite his career-long shock streak.

The album had become a physical art piece and a diary for Manson, as he used his home to document the dissolving of his relationship by writing lyrics on the walls and turning the home into his personal canvas.

"Some of the things I say here, it's sad to say them—they're relationship-destroying statements. Some of it is stuff I should have said to my ex-wife. Some are things I've never said to the world." -Manson [Revolver, 2009] 

This album is the first in the Manson catalogue that is not considered to be primarily industrial metal (rather being marked as an alternative rock project due to the differences in pacing and genre shifts), although some of the more aggressive songs provide the industrial sound that the band had become famous for. Songs like Devour build slowly and utilize distortion and softer instrumentals to create an album that clashes with the rest of the band's discography - meaning that this is one of the most unique albums within the band's entire discography; and it is also one that helped to shape their future outputs with albums like Born Villain and Heaven Upside Down. 

The album's songs appear on the tracklist in the order in which they were written in, meaning that the album flows as a project where the songs work incredibly well both inside and outside of the album's context - providing an album with memorable songs that are worth replaying and adding to a playlist rather than creating a static front-to-back piece. There are a plethora of massive shifts in tone and genres, using new sounds that were blueprinted with the band's previous albums despite the changes that the band had encountered in the gap between this album and their previous effort, Eat Me, Drink Me. 

For this album, Twiggy Ramirez had re-entered the band after his departure in 2002, which led to Tim Sköld leaving the band - meaning that Twiggy had served as the replacement of Sköld on guitar. Due to Twiggy re-joining the band's lineup, the album wound up being a largely collaborative project between him and Manson, with the two of them producing the album alongside Chris Vrenna (previously of Nine Inch Nails) and Sean Beavan, who had produced the band's second and third albums. This led to a sound that has been widely compared to the band's earlier works while being something new and entirely unique for their discography, providing yet another breath of life into a discography that is built entirely off of incredible albums and experimentation.

The experimentation of this album is something that few other bands could pull off. It's largely personal in a much different way than Manson fans had come to expect - and it's an album that many of his fans are sure to be pleased by, even so many years later. The album is full of both hidden gems and hits, and although this album did not perform as well as some of the band's other works, it is just as incredible as their other works while providing something completely new. Although there are very few moments that don't quite stick as much as others, the entire album is an exceptional project that leaves a very prominent mark in the band's discography.

"'15' is track 15 on the album. It's the most important song I think that's been written by MARILYN MANSON as an entity. It's the most unusual song I have ever heard. I thought that the album was done, as there is a glorious epic track [before that] that I think will make Twiggy forever recognized as a guitar hero. That felt like the end of the record, but what was happening in my life had not resolved itself. So on January 5, one five, I sang '15' and the lyrics will tell the story of that day…" -Manson [Blabbermouth, 2009]

Acoustics and pop-esque elements are combined in a handful of moments to create an album that is alternative to the core, and although some songs may be "too different" for some, the overall album is an incredible project from front to back despite a much longer runtime than their previous album. It returns back to a very classic Manson album formatting and pacing, and the sequencing of the album was done in a way where you can see the artistic changes and themes budding in every single song. 

It's much more rooted in glam rock than expected, and it takes on a new, more mixed form for the band - something completely unexpected considering the industrial purist approach they had taken for years prior to this album's release in 2009. It's a refreshing look into a changed, more matured Manson - and the band plays alongside him exceptionally well through all of the experimentation and different genres that are explored throughout the album. The level of personal touches and maturity throughout the entire album is something truly remarkable for Manson, and although it caters to his die-hard fans in some instances, it's an album that focuses on artistry and his potently personal lyricism, with some moments of his classic rebellion being brought in to the mix to make it an all-rounder of Manson projects.

Lyrics throughout still flash back to the shock tactics of the band, with songs like Pretty as a ($) and Blank and White containing incredibly controversial and offensive lyrical content with the intentions of shocking an audience - something that Manson has done throughout his entire career. It's an ode to an older era while growing into something much more refined and mature, and songs like 'Running to the Edge of the World' showcase the more vulnerable and emotional side of Manson through heartstring tugging balladry that hadn't been seen since Coma White. 

By this point in the band's run, Manson had become much more than just the "shock rocker" that he had been known as for so many years. After all of the fame and the ups and downs that came alongside it, Manson had grown a massive amount of experience that helped to shape albums like this one - using his personal experiences as a learning point for intimate songwriting and songs that are burning with emotion and passion for song through and through. 

Two things ended with this album - as this would be the band's last album with drummer Ginger Fish as well as their last signed to Interscope records due to censorship and restraints from the label that confined the band more than they had liked. Manson had made various different condemning comments about both the label and it's CEO (which was Jimmy Iovine at the time that this album was released), citing censorship of artistry as one of the major issues the band had been facing. He was subsequently dropped from the label after the album had been met with poor sales, and he felt a sense of freedom no longer having his visions for the band's music and videos "squashed" by record executives and their expectations for the band. 

This album was one of their most troublesome projects when it comes to what the band was going through, with mid-production lineup changes and label distress as well as the personal events within Manson's life, it was a lot to take for just one album - but in just fifteen tracks and over an hour of the listeners time, the band managed to create something that captured every side of the everchanging coin.

The album is the same old Manson that fans had grown to know and love, but it's a version of him that had grown with his fans in the midst of personal turmoil and emotional struggle. His hurt was turned into song, and it isn't the murderously aggressive biting industrial music that one might expect from a Manson album - it's something with restraint and personality, something that takes on a new form that showcases Manson as a human underneath all of the scrutiny and personas that he had shaped for so long. It's an album that lets the mask fall and lets that band play each song to their fullest potentials, and the resulting album is one of the band's most memorably unique projects. It's political, rebellious, and completely unfiltered - making it the pinnacle of everything that had shaped Manson.

The High End of Low is an album that takes many different forms in a near constant manner throughout its runtime. It's a project that changes its sound and subgenre in every song, which makes for an incredibly interesting listening experience that provides something for everyone. With clear vocal performances and a mix of classic and new sounds, the band is sharp on their feet and worked hard at polishing this album to create something that is unlike any of their other albums. It's one that might take some getting used to, but it's an album that is sure to stick in the end.