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Born Villain is the eighth studio album by American Rock music 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 Marilyn Manson 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. It is primarily a heavy metal record, and, at the time of its release, contained 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 journalism, 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 surrealism 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 ("Twins of Evil") and Alice Cooper ("Masters of Madness").
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 Ramirez'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".
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 Plant anatomy 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 (itself based on the short story "Never Bet the Devil Your Head" by Edgar Allan Poe) 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 a heavy metal record, and contains 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 music, 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 Audio frequency of 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.
Born Villain was released worldwide from April 30, with a cover version 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".
The album was preceded by "No Reflection", which was leaked by Manson to KROQ-FM on March 7, 2012. Cooking Vinyl CEO Martin Goldschmidt called the leak a "masterstroke", saying "we had all these exclusives lined up around the world, and then Manson blew them all. ... We're already getting more radio play than the whole of the last record." The song spent fourteen weeks on the Billboard Mainstream Rock Chart, peaking at number twenty-six, making it the band's best-performing single there since "Personal Jesus" in 2004. Its music video, which was directed by Lukas Ettlin and starred Roxane Mesquida of Rubber, premiered on April 4 on VEVO. On Record Store Day, a limited edition 7" white vinyl for the song was released exclusively in Europe. The band performed at the 2012 Revolver Golden Gods Awards, where they were joined on-stage by Depp and The Pretty Reckless singer Taylor Momsen for "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)" and "The Beautiful People". A video for "Slo-Mo-Tion" was released on August 21. It was directed by Manson and featured a cameo appearance from Eastbound & Down actor Steve Little. This was followed on September 28 with a video for "Hey, Cruel World...". Directed by Tim Mattia for AmpRockTV, it contains backstage and live performance footage from concerts in Milan, Brixton and Los Angeles. A remix EP for "Slo-Mo-Tion" was released on November 5.
The "Hey Cruel World... Tour" began at the end of April, which was interspersed with two co-headlining tours: "Twins of Evil" with Rob Zombie and "Masters of Madness" with Alice Cooper. The former tour received significant media attention when a feud developed between Manson and Zombie, culminating in a series of on-stage insults. It began after Manson apologized to the audience at Chicago's Allstate Arena on Twitter for not performing "The Beautiful People", and instructed the audience to "sing it in between Zombie songs, his band has already played it"—a reference to Zombie's band containing two former members of Marilyn Manson: John 5 and Ginger Fish. The row escalated in Clarkston when Manson accused Zombie of deliberately cutting into his set time. Zombie responded during his set by yelling obscenities at Manson.
Several reviews considered Born Villain to be a comeback for the band. Matthew Horton of Virgin Media described it as "a new step forward, bristling with a vitality that Manson has no right to still have in his locker this far down the line." Similarly, Kill Hipsters called it "one hell of a comeback for a guy everyone–including myself–thought was well and truly dead and gone." Loudwire's Graham Hartmann praised the album as a whole, as did Rick Florino of Artistdirect, who said: "From top to bottom, it's Manson's most vicious and vibrant effort since Antichrist Superstar. Make no mistake about it: this is Manson at his best." Bloody Disgusting ranked it among the band's best work.
The band received acclaim for the quality of their songwriting. Fred Thomas of AllMusic complimented them for disposing of the introspective material which appeared on prior albums and choosing to "accentuate all the throbbing rhythms, metallic guitars and bilious disgust that defined the band's best work." He went on to suggest that Born Villain could pave the way for future releases. Reviewing for Classic Rock, Mick Farren – who was cynical of the hype the album was receiving – said "to my delight as a closet fan, Born Villain turns out to be little short of excellent", praising its emphasis on "bone-crunching rhythm". A review for Blabbermouth said that several tracks were likely to be considered classics among the band's discography. Ottawa Sun complimented the album's lyrical themes, saying that it saw Manson "rising like the Slasher film antihero he deserves to be." Mayer Nissim of Digital Spy praised the album for being more fun than previous work, while Gary Graff from Billboard applauded it for containing a wide variety of moods and styles.
The record also received some mixed reviews. The Arts Desk disliked the heavier material on the album, although they praised its glam rock-influenced songs. Stephen Dalton of The National complimented its more aggressive and humorous tracks, but said the album was "not quite the knockout blow needed to regain his title as the world heavyweight champion of shock rock." British magazine Rock Sound complained that the record contained too many long introductions, which they said disrupted its fluidity. Writing for NME, Hamish MacBain defined the album as being better than average, saying there was "just a lack of magic, a lack of something special going on. It's not bad. It's not good." Tom Bryant from Kerrang! was also unimpressed, although he praised "Breaking the Same Old Ground" as an emotional climax for the record, writing: "For a man who's spent so long appearing not to be human, the deliverance of naked soul makes for a nice twist. Perhaps this should be where his future lies?"
Andy Gill of The Independent awarded Born Villain their lowest rating of one star out of five. He criticized Manson's lyrics as being hate-filled and suggested: "If he tried to find something he liked, he might actually make something worth listening to." Conversely, a review by Simon Price for that publication's sister edition, The Independent on Sunday, gave the album their top score of five stars, saying that it "features some of his finest lyrics yet and, musically, it often approaches the heyday of Holy Wood and Mechanical Animals. It is, then, something approaching the 'stunning return to form' of rock-crit cliché."
Internationally, the album peaked within the top twenty of numerous territories. It debuted at number two in Switzerland, where it was held off the top spot by Norah Jones' Little Broken Hearts. In France, the record peaked at number eight, and has sold over 15,000 copies there as of November 2014. Born Villain became the band's fourth top ten studio album in Germany, when it debuted at number five. In the United Kingdom, it debuted at number fourteen – five places higher than The High End of Low – selling almost 7,000 copies on its first week. The album spent two weeks at number one on the UK Rock Albums Chart. In Japan, it sold 5,825 copies to debut at number eighteen.
Marilyn Manson
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