Originally Posted by
Sesquipedalism
Well, I'll be the stick in the mud. I think it's okay. What follows is only my opinion.
I'll lead with the good. As many have said, the production is quite good. Sounds crisp and deliberate and professional. The instrumental vibe seems appropriate—it's not grasping at faded glory or the very awkward attempt at goth rocking chair folk that some people felt afraid of. Honestly, I think it's what adult contemporary rock sounds like thirtysome years after we came up with the term and slapped it on Kenny Loggins and the ilk. That's not an insult; musically, the album isn't pushing any boundaries, it's largely inoffensive, and doesn't really feel like a musical costume. When I said in my review of Heaven Upside Down that the last three tracks sounded like late-period Bon Jovi, this is the sound I imagined they were going for even if they didn't quite stick the landing. By and large, it doesn't feel foolish or forced.
It's also cohesive and fairly consistent—possibly simply because the album is the right length. A major gripe of mine for almost every Manson record (exempted: Portrait, Animals, Eat Me, and maybe Emperor) is bloat. Some of those albums are so packed with crap that it's hard to hit any mark of consistency or cohesion. In the case of Chaos, everything holds together nicely. There are no noticeable troughs, so far as I'm concerned (which may be helped along by the fact I also don't really see any peaks). And nothing seems out of place on the record. Heaven was a mishmash of songs that barely seemed like they should have the same performer; "Deep Six" was a real oddball on Emperor; the sudden pivot to two straightforward crap pop synth rock songs near the end of Grotesque has always felt awkward to me. None of that here. While maybe one can excuse High End for being all over the place in that the songs were all written in sequence and no attention was paid to cohesion, every song on this album feels of a piece to me in the same way as Eat Me or (depending on "Deep Six") Pale Emperor.
Lyrically, the album is coherent, mostly. The often cringeworthy wordplay has been toned down quite considerably and there are comparatively few instances of that deliberately-awkward-to-be-artsy thing he's grown to love doing. Aggressive obliqueness. It feels either more soberly written—and I mean that in both senses—or like he allowed someone in to edit. And that's a good thing. There are even a few nice turns of phrase, though I don't see a lot of them. But honestly, I'll chalk up not making me wince as a win.
So, very cool. Kudos. If Shooter was the helm here, he kept it together nicely.
As for the bad, well, it's mostly a lot of meh. I'm threeish listens in over a couple of days and there's plenty of time to grow, but usually I know if something's going to tug at my ear or not by this point. It's bland. Sturdy. And I think I'd be happy for the guy if this was how he chose to ride out the end of his career. But at present, I imagine I'll listen to this thing a few more times and then forget about it. Which is better than when I spent some time with the last record, then put it on the shelf and occasionally scowled about it until a few weeks ago, when I spun it again for our discussion.
***
The spoken word intro to "Red, Black, & Blue" is the worst moment of the record. So, I'm glad it's out of the way fast? It feels like a Jim Morrisson impersonation. It's not as bad as the spoken word on Born Villain, but it's so prominently placed it feels aggressively unnecessary. If I liked the rest of the track, I'd probably take the time in Audacity to split it right off like the MacBeth intro to "Overneath." Otherwise, it's alright lyrically, but it's got a serious case of what I think I called Second Verse Syndrome when I was talking about his older records. It's like he really plans out a first verse that makes sense, then a chorus (and maybe refrain) that sometimes hits and sometimes doesn't, but which he clearly finds significant, and then the second verse is short and oblique and kind of throwaway. "Coma White"—an excellent track—even has this going on. "Black & Blue" has a really decent, really coherent first verse, then a middling chorus and bridge, and then kinda trails off. And I have this complaint about most of the songs on the record. The song is decent.
"We Are Chaos" sounds better to me in the context of the album and away from its video. It might have been this song I was discussing when I brought up Second Verse Syndrome initially because, ugh, does it have that going on. But it's fine. I'm not mad at it. I like that it still feels a little unexpected.
The bridge of "Don't Chase the Dead" reminds me a lot of "Mechanical Animals." The cadence of "Don't chase the dead or they'll end up chasing you" feels enough like a call back to the cadence of "They'll never be good to you or bad to you" that I can't decide if I like it or not. The song as a whole feels Animals-like, though, and not in an unpleasant way. But it suffers a bit for getting me thinking of that better record because this isn't up to that level. But again, it's okay. Very radio-friendly.
Even if no one had said "Paint You With My Love" sounds like "Love Hurts," I would have caught it by the end of the first bar. Jesus. Lyrically, this is a lower point—this is what I thought the downside of working with Shooter Jennings could look like, although nowhere near as horrifying as I thought it could be. It feels disingenuous, but in such a way that I might, mood-dependent, be inclined to view it as camp. Which suits it fine. The second verse feels like it belongs to a different song, again. And again, it's alright.
"Halfway" has a third verse! The whole thing makes sense! It's a little dull, but it's probably my favorite track on the album—at least for now—and I would be honestly happy if this were what the end of his career sounded like. It doesn't thrill me, but it doesn't outright bore me, and I don't hate it. Plus it feels effortful and earnest—things very much not always guaranteed in Manson's discography. Kudos.
"Infinite Darkness" feels like the same kind of free-form thing as maybe a "Demon Seed," and those sort of ventures can be really impressionistic or fun. This doesn't strike me as either. The proper verses are lackluster and, for me, none of the various refrains hit. Musically, the song is a bit of a slog. All in all, I feel like I'm listening to a radically improved and edited "Doppelherz." At least when he's repeating shit here, it mostly makes sense.
I had high hopes for "Perfume" what with the early reviews. Musically, it's a fun glam stomp. It's pretty generic, but I'll take generic glam stomp over a lot of things. The vocal take and vocal layering annoys me, though. The high-end harmonies on the chorus annoy me to the point I'd like to take out my right earbud; and the lower register slow slur he's doing most of the other singing with feels like it's not quite hitting the mark I'd want something like this to. There's a drunk fat Elvis groove he could have hit here, and I bring it up because I think that's kinda what he was aiming at, but he's not quite landing it.
And it's very possible it might just be because of what's swirling in my head lately, but the first verse doesn't sit well with me. Manson bitching about "victim is chic" and "you're as famous as your pain" reminds me of his whining during the end of 2017 regarding #metoo. And "more fascist than Vogue" brings to mind the ordeal from last year between Evan Rachel Wood and Italian Vogue, that started with a topless shoot she did for them in 2007, resulted in a shitty editorial by one of their writers in 2012, then was called to public attention last summer by Wood, when she found the article. The writer eventually offered a public apology for making Wood feel, in her words, "worthless." And thinking of that made me remember that, post-breakup, Wood also did some heavily publicized nude photos with Chris Evans in an ad campaign for Gucci perfume. So, ugh. Could just be because of shit in the ether, but I'm not really dying to hear Manson singing about chic victimhood and famous pain and then deliver a second verse about buckshot perfume leaving brains in your hair knowing...everything and remembering the video for "Running to the Edge of the World."
Moving on.
"Keep My Head Together" has a...Cure-like vibe to the music? Something very early 1990s goth, before goth got eaten by industrial? Might be the most musically evocative point of the album for me. Like a lot of the other tracks, it's seriously lyrically repetitive, though. But it's not bad. Not innovative and not spectacular, but it definitely qualifies as a highlight. The production on this one particularly sparkles. And it's grown on me more than any other song so far. Side note: Manson's prototypically Manson delivery of "future" in the first verse makes me really wish that Jennings sticks with him for another record and convinces him to lay off the vocal processing for a change.
Can anyone help me with the title of "Solve Coagula"? Am I missing something obvious? I guess the solution for a coagula would be a blood thinner? I don't know. Anyways, fun instrumental break in the middle of this one; I like the noodling and wish it went on longer. And the refrains hit on this one—"I'm just broken and I don't want to be fixed" and "No one else I want to be like so I stay the same like nobody else"—both seem heartfelt and earnest. Though again, like 70% of this song is just a repeated few lines.
"Broken Needle" would be so much better with no vocal processing. I hope there's an acoustic version of this one. It's decent. And it's a pretty solid redux of the patented Latter Era Manson Romance Song, though it starts so much stronger. That first verse is fantastic. Maybe my favorite on the record? And I even kinda like the chorus, when I can think of it more as a cautionary song than a celebration of his tendency to wreck people. Like he's warning the record to stay away from his broken needle. But the song starts losing me when it gets to the fairy tale metaphor in the second verse and, by the end, he's back to using his own damage as a threat. "I'll never ever play you again." For a song that starts out as such a lamentation, the turn at the end feels tonally shitty to me. Maybe it'll hit me differently on subsequent listens.
***
So, overall, pretty decent effort. And I'm glad everyone else really seems to be digging it. I don't at the moment, but I do think it's got some stuff going for it and it's a hell of an improvement from the last outing. And like I said, maybe it'll grow on me. If I had to stack it at this moment, I'd say that it lands higher than High End, but lower than Grotesque, which makes it...eighth for me? If something grew on me, it could edge out Grotesque based solely on its production, coherence, and consistency.
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