Born Villain
Born Villain is the eighth studio album by American rock band Marilyn Manson. It was released on April 25, 2012, by Cooking Vinyl and Marilyn Manson's independent record label Hell, etc. It was the band's first release since the departure of Ginger Fish, who had been their drummer since 1995, and was their only album to feature Fred Sablan. The record was co-produced by the band's eponymous vocalist alongside former Nine Inch Nails member Chris Vrenna, who left shortly after its completion to focus on other production work.
Manson was more involved in the album's composition than he was on preceding releases. Primarily an industrial rock and alternative metal record, it contains some of the heaviest material the band had ever recorded. A cover version of Carly Simon's "You're So Vain" featuring Johnny Depp was included as a bonus track on all editions of the record. The album received mixed reviews from music critics, with several publications considering it to be a comeback for the band, while others were critical of its heaviness and violent lyrical content. It became the band's seventh top ten studio album on the Billboard 200, and also topped Billboards Independent Albums and Top Hard Rock Albums charts.
The first single, "No Reflection", earned the band their fourth Grammy Award nomination, and went on to become their best-performing single on the US Mainstream Rock Chart since their cover of "Personal Jesus" in 2004. "Slo-Mo-Tion" was issued as its second and final single, although a music video was later released for "Hey, Cruel World...". The album was preceded by a surrealist short film, also titled Born Villain. They toured extensively to support the record; the "Hey Cruel World... Tour" was interspersed by co-headlining tours with Rob Zombie and Alice Cooper.
Background and recording
On December 3, 2009, it was announced that Marilyn Manson had parted ways with their long-time record label Interscope. That same day, the band confirmed that they had been composing new material while touring in support of their previous studio album, The High End of Low. The band's eponymous vocalist also suggested that a series of special one-off concerts were in development for the near future. These performances would see each album from Manson's triptych of albums being played in its entirety over three different nights in the one venue which never materialized. On January 12, 2010, Chris Vrenna said that the band were "talking and coming up with concepts" for an upcoming studio album. Two weeks later, Manson confirmed on the band's Myspace profile that "the new album is officially in motion".Manson confirmed during his appearance at the 2010 Revolver Golden Gods Awards in April that the band had recorded 13 songs, and also expressed an interest in releasing the record in a different way from previous ones. Fred Sablan – guitarist for Twiggy's side-project Goon Moon – joined the band in July, and in October Twiggy described the upcoming album as being "almost done", saying: "It's our best record yet. I mean, everyone always says that, but I think this is our best work so far. It's kind of like a little more of a punk rock Mechanical Animals, without sounding too pretentious." Manson attested that its lyrical content would be "more romantic" yet "self-abusive", and described its sonic elements as being "suicide death metal".
In November, it was announced that the band had signed a joint-venture deal with London-based indie label Cooking Vinyl. As part of the deal, the band would retain creative control over its artistic direction, with the band and label sharing profits equally after the label recouped costs associated with marketing, promotion and distribution. Ginger Fish, the band's drummer since 1995, quit in February 2011, explaining that he "decided to step down as a member of Marilyn Manson and see where my life, and the knowledge of my availability cares to take me. I can't stand by to watch opportunities pass me by simply because the knowledge of my availability wasn't clearly expressed by me." By the end of the year, Vrenna had also departed the group, to focus on other production work, whilst indicating that the band's eighth studio album was "largely completed".
Composition and style
Manson has referred to Born Villain as the band's "grandest concept record". He has said its title was inspired by the controversy which surrounded the band after the 1999 Columbine High School massacre, when elements of the mainstream media falsely accused the band of influencing its perpetrators. The title also references the nature versus nurture argument, with Manson elaborating to CNN: "In any story, the villain is the catalyst. The hero's not a person who will bend the rules or show the cracks in his armor. He's one-dimensional intentionally, but the villain is the person who owns up to what he is and stands by it. He'll do things that are sometimes morally questionable, but he does it because it's his nature to do it, and it never fluctuates."When writing its lyrics, the vocalist found recurring themes of guns and flowers emerging throughout his work. He indicated that this stems from his father serving in the US Armed Forces during the Vietnam War, as well as the flower power movement. "Pistol Whipped" uses wordplay to liken phytotomy with sexual violence, while the title of "The Flowers of Evil" was inspired by Charles Baudelaire's poetry collection Les Fleurs du mal. Numerous other works are also referenced, including Federico Fellini's 1968 film Spirits of the Dead and Greek mythology. "Overneath the Path of Misery" begins with the vocalist reciting part of the "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow" soliloquy from William Shakespeare's Macbeth. Manson indicated that he reinterpreted the soliloquy's intent to being a statement of empowerment, as opposed to one of desolation. Its lyrics go on to allude to various aspects found in Roman Polanski's 1971 film version of the play.
The frontman was more involved in the composition of Born Villain than he was for preceding records. Manson has said that this is a result of him beginning the project with a different mindset from that of his chief collaborator, Twiggy. He said he developed a "clear idea" of the album's direction early in its writing stages, which he was reluctant to share with other members of the band. He worked on the album in a minimally decorated apartment located above a liquor store in Downtown Los Angeles, which was once owned by actor Billy Zane and was the site where Manson created his first painting in 1996. The album contains seven songs which feature the vocalist as a composer, including three where he is listed as the sole writer. At the time of the album's release, Manson distanced himself from the approach he took when creating previous albums, explaining: "On the last two records I made, I was trying to make people feel what I was feeling—which wasn't a good idea, because I was feeling like shit. Check mark number one: don't make records that make people feel bad."
The album is primarily an industrial rock and alternative metal record, and features some of the heaviest material the band has ever recorded. It also contains songs which have been ascribed to various sub-genres, such as punk rock, gothic rock, EBM, industrial, glam rock and blues. Manson has said that the album is a departure from the band's previous records, and that it was inspired by the work of acts he listened to before forming Marilyn Manson: namely Killing Joke, Joy Division, Revolting Cocks, Bauhaus and The Birthday Party. He also revealed that the band employed the hypersonic effect during recording, whereby they altered the frequencies of sound effects to beyond the threshold of conscious human hearing. He explained that this was done to "meddle with people's reactions" to the album—and hoped it would make listeners feel nauseous.
Release and artwork
In May 2010, the band's website underwent a complete overhaul, incorporating a new logo along with a clip of a previously unreleased song. The CMYK coloring was also notable with regard to an acrostic which appeared in a journal entry accompanying the site changes, spelling out the words "Christianity Manufactures Yesterday's Killers". The album's title was revealed in September 2011. That same month, Manson and Twiggy attended the opening of artist Nick Kushner's exhibition at the Studio Servitu Gallery in LA, where the upcoming album was played in its entirety. LA Weekly attended the event and confirmed the upcoming album would be released in 2012.Born Villain was released worldwide from April 30, with a cover of Carly Simon's "You're So Vain" included on all editions as a bonus track. This cover was recorded after the album had been completed, and features Johnny Depp performing guitar. The pair were introduced when Manson appeared as an extra on 21 Jump Street when he was 19, although "You're So Vain" is their first musical collaboration. The cover originated from a jam session, with Manson explaining that they "started playing old blues songs and I said, 'My record's done, but we should really do a song to add to the end of it, as if it were a movie.'" He described the cover's placement on the album as: "It's like the movie's over, and this is playing at the end title credits." It was later included on the soundtrack to the documentary West of Memphis. Dean Karr, who served as the photographer on Manson's cover shoot for the March 2012 issue of Revolver, was commissioned to create the album's cover art. He had previously worked on the artwork accompanying Antichrist Superstar. However, the cover image would later be revealed to be the work of photographer Lindsay Usich, with Karr's photography being used for the album's first single, "No Reflection".