We Are Chaos.
Marylin Manson released his eleventh album and reached number one in Portugal and Australia with it. The ten tracks, totaling forty-two minutes in length, belie nothing of the Canadian-born band's long-standing take on alternative metal. The stated intention of the album is a conceptual design that relies on the classic layout of the tracks into an A-side and a B-side, as it used to be the case with conventional vinyl records. The opening Red, Black, And Blue begins with a dramatically arranged recitative that builds into a composition with a strong chorus. In general, chorus work is a strength of many Manson songs, and WE ARE CHAOS (the correct title should be capitalized) is no exception in this regard. The title track is the vehicle for the idea the band is communicating to the world. We're all chaos, we're complicated and there's basically no helping us. A bit nihilistic. It is the authors' wish that the album be understood differently by everyone and even that repeated listens shift the perception of the content to a different, new level. A tragic circumstance also spoke into the creation, which apparently shaped some of the ideas into their final form (Broken Needle). That event was the unexpected death of Manson's personal tattoo artist and close friend Eric Rosenbaum (Norm Love Letters). For a long time, Marilyn Manson has referred to inspirations that have little to do with metal, such as Roxy Music, Pink Floyd and Elton John. But on close listening, bits of the seventies can be heard in some of the progressions, and David Bowie, for example, is audibly present in several tracks. The aforementioned, time-tested, unquestioned musical values are not just a marketing tool presented, but fortify the sound, the arrangements, the lyrics and the concept. They can be heard, for example, in Half-Way One Step Forward or Keep My Head Together. Solve Coagula, with a country and western prologue, treats the theme of the alchemical formula that if something new is to be created, something else must first be broken. This fits the album's atmosphere perfectly. In addition to the players of the individual instruments, Shooter Jennings is an important co-writer and creator of the instrumentation. The album took over two years to record, mainly due to the heavy workload of the individual musicians. For the same reason it was recorded in several studios, which is not noticeable in the result. We are Chaos is a solid album with no empty spaces. Like most of its predecessors, it is pathetic, posturing and somewhat pretentious. And that's a good thing.