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86 of 95 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Rock is NOT dead - why Manson Matters, October 1, 2004
Reasons the 90's needed Marilyn Manson:
Boybands. American Idol. Brittany Spears. Cher makes a comeback. So does Bon Jovi. Not to mention the Religious Right really needed an act to pin rock and roll as the devil's music on. So along comes a skinny disaffected young man with enough greasepaint to make Kiss blush and a stage show that would make Alice Cooper proud. Trent Reznor heard the news and jumped on board, and after a couple of interesting but inconsequential CD's, Manson hit paydirt with "Anti-Christ Superstar." Using the media to bend and distort the image of both the band (with the schizophrenic first/last psuedo-names) and the staged anger of "Beautiful People," Manson became an instant celebrity and a lightning rod.
And like the best shock-rockers and gender benders, Manson fed right off it. This is the kind of masterful heavyrock that scared the crap out of parents and gave adolescent rebellion a howling chariot of thud to ride off to school with. The darkness is for real here, but so is the musicianship. Manson's "Mechanical Animals" was his "Billion Dollar Babies," his "Diamond Dogs." The slinky "Dope Show" is as much a warning against overindulgence at the same time "Rock Is Dead" sardonically proved Manson's brand of bone crushing was definitely not!
Even better is that Manson is nowhere near as foolish or demonic as his biggest critics would make him out to be. The cheerleader hooks in "Fight Song" and "mOBSCENE" will bring a smile or two to the most jaded hard rocker, and covering new-wave dance staples like "Tainted Love" or "Sweet Dreams" takes more than a little chutzpah. (The cover of "Personal Jesus" doesn't stray far from Depeche Mode, nor is it near the revelation Johnny Cash's version is.) For those who ever caught him on "Politically Incorrect" or the occasional talk show (as well as Michael Moore's "Bowling For Columbine") would be able to tell you, the former Brain Warner is thoughtful, articulate and politically astute. The man who rakes society over the coals for creating a culture of "Disposable Teens" is also his own best defender.
"Lest We Forget" takes 17 statements and proves that Marilyn Manson (both the band and the singer) helped keep rock vital in the last decade and a half. That there are still factions out there that consider him "dangerous" matters plenty to me...not every maker of music needs to host a slick variety show to get a message out. If you don't have all the CDs, this is a great starter collection. In fact, it holds together with the muscle of a regular album. There aren't too many folks you can say that about.
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18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
New Fans Only Please, September 28, 2004
Being a moderate fan of Manson (I have all his CDs, but he's not my favorite or anything, though I do consider him extremely talented), I bought this CD upon its release day but I bought the version with the DVD because I basically have all the songs already except for "Personal Jesus" and "Tainted Love". The DVD version costs a few extra bucks, but considering it features all of Manson's videos, what's a few bucks?
As I said before, I have all of Manson's CDs, therefore I have basically all the songs on here, so if you already have all of Manson's CDs then you're waisting your money and basically buying all the same songs again. However, this is a perfect place for new fans to start as it covers his entire career and fans can pick their favorite songs, find out what album they're from, and check that particular album out. Or, if you're lookig for just one Manson CD to buy, this'll do (though I highly suggest picking up his other CDs because some of his best songs were not 'hits').
PROS:
-ALL OF MANSON'S HITS ON ONE CD!
-Again, a good starting place for new fans
-"Tainted Love", which I did not have before
-"Long Hard Road Out of Hell" is on this CD, so you don't have to go out and buy the pretty much crappy "Spawn" soundtrack to get it (like I did)
-An FBI "Anti-piracy" sticker to scare off thieves! (*sarcasm*)
CONS:
-ALL OF MANSON'S (already released) HITS ON ONE CD!...
-...except for his cover of Depeche Mode's "Personal Jesus", which is pretty dull and defintly not worth buying the CD for just that one song. However, if you want a good, hard-rockin' cover of "PJ", check out Lollipop Lust Kill's one (and only) album "My So-Called Knife". They too cover the song. It's #10 on that CD and I like it way more than Manson's version.
-The booklet is unsatifying. When Rob Zombie released "Past, Present & Future" he released it with a huge CD booklet full of old and new pictures, artwork, etc., whereas this basically has six or seven pages of Manson photos, no song information, no lyrics, basically no nothing.
-One of the few pictures in the booklet (it might only be on the DVD/CD version because that comes in a digipak and it's on the digipak sleve) shows two girls with "Marilyn" and "Manson" carved on their chests. SERIOUSLY, how much more like ketchup could that "blood" look?
So would I buy this CD if it were DVD-less? Definetly not. I recommend buying the DVD version to hardcore fans definetly and even new fans, as it has everything this version does PLUS all his vidoes (except "Astonishing Paranoia of the End Time" (sorry if I didn't get that song title right), "Tainted Love", "Personal Jesus", and the quote excluse unquote, highly talked about video for "(s)AINT". You can't only get "(s)AINT" if you order the CD/DVD package directly off his website from what I've heard, a pisser for me because I thought it came on all CD/DVD versions. Oh well...)
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25 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Blows against the empire by Manson, November 14, 2005
I used to listen to Marilyn Manson, getting two of his albums before I readjusted my tastes in an effort to get closer to well...never mind that. However, upon seeing a clip of Manson do "Fight Song" on Bowling For Columbine, as well as some pointedly intelligent things he said to Michael Moore, I decided to get Lest We Forget, which had most of his popular songs. What I remembered were fierce metal sounds, roaring screams of outrage, packed with energy that makes Metallica sound like Savage Garden, and his scathing attacks on hypocrisy and decadence of the rich and supposed Christian righteousness.
"Love Song" is closely related to Columbine, allegorically about how if we care enough about each other, we won't need to rely on three bulwarks of hypocrisy. "Do you love your guns? God? The government?" asks the father to a bullet who has a crush on a little pistol.
In "The Fight Song," he implies how things are staged in the celebrity biz, that showbiz cuts stars' wrists and claim death was on sale. Notable lyric: "The death of one is a tragedy, but death of a million is just a statistic." Other cuts against establishment celeb world is "This Is The New Sh-t," on how new entertainment is packaged. The mimicry of those marketing the new sh-t is funny: "Babble, Babble, B-tch, B-tch/Rebel, Rebel, Party, Party/S-x, S-x, S-x, And don't forget the violence." It comes down to giving the enslaved people this new sh-t even if they don't need it, but they'll want it anyway: "Are you m--------ers ready for the new sh-t?/Stand up and admit tomorrow's never coming/This is the new sh-t/Stand up and admit/Do we need it? NO!/Do we want it? YEAH!"
His penchant for covering 80's songs is demonstrated by a new track, "Personal Jesus" by Depeche Mode, whose fuzz and industrial drumming sounds place it more in the Mechanical Animals era. "Tainted Love" from Not Another Teen Movie, with its bleeping synths and fuzzy glam wall of metal guitars, gives another version, that of My Ruin, a run for its money. His best known cover is that of a slowed down Eurythmics' "Sweet Dreams," which he did on the Smells Like Children EP, and which made a brief appearance in Life As A House.
The brisk attack of "Beautiful People" from Antichrist Superstar showed him baring his teeth against the hatred and contempt shown by those with more money and prestige on those who don't. He uncovers something horrible when he screams: "Hey you, what do you see?/something beautiful and something free?/hey you, are you trying to be mean?/if you live with apes man, it's hard to be clean." Yeah, there are plenty of people who live with apes, all right.
The more glam stuff from Mechanical Animals, like "Rock Is Dead" also on The Matrix soundtrack, is still great, especially where he belts out the line of "f--- all your protests and put them to bed." The droning dirge of "The Dope Show" with its attack on the Hollywood set, where drugs are available to those famous ones, makes me wonder if there's not class and looks discrimination in drug use, as the rich and handsome are the ones who can afford them more.
Of the material post-Mechanical Animals, "mOBSCENE" from Golden Age of Grotesque is the one of the hardest-driving and best songs he's done, and the female cheerleader chorus singing "be obscene, be be obscene!"
"Disposable Teens" is a condemnatory anthem against lies and the perceived sell-out of the previous generation, with vitriol such as "I'm a teen distortion, survived abortion" and "never really hated a one true god/but the god of the people I hated/you said you wanted evolution, the ape was a great big hit/you say you want a revolution, man
and I say that you're full of s---."
Pretty extreme stuff where Manson's slashes against the establishment are done with a ferocious mixture of metal and bestial roars. Yet I already see some notable omissions. From Antichrist Superstar, the title track and "1996," which Senator Joe Lieberman condemned-one of my reasons for getting AS in the first place. And what of his cover of Bowie's "Golden Years" from the Dead Man On Campus soundtrack, as well as his version of AC-DC's "Highway To Hell" from Detroit Rock City?
I close with these lines from "Fight Song", an anthem for many to follow, lest we forget: "But I'm not a slave to a god that doesn't exist. But I'm not a slave to world that doesn't give a sh-t."
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