Personnel: Marilyn Manson (vocals, guitar, saxophone, Mellotron, synthesizer, bass, drums, loops); John (guitar, strings, piano); Tim Skold (guitar, accordion, keyboards, synthesizer, bass, programming); MW Gacy (keyboards, synthesizer, loops); Ginger Fish (drums).

Producers: Marilyn Manson, Tim Skold, Ben Grosse.

Recorded at Doppelherz, The Mix Room, Burbank, California and Ocean Way Studios, Los Angeles, California.

"Mobscene" was nominated for the 2004 Grammy Award for Best Metal Performance.

Personnel: Marilyn Manson (vocals, guitar, saxophone, piano, Mellotron, bass synthesizer, drums, loops); Tim Skold (guitar, accordion, keyboards, bass synthesizer, drum programming, electronics, loops); John 5 (guitar); M.W. Gacy (keyboards, synthesizer, electronics, loops); Ginger Fish (drums).

Audio Mixer: Ben Grosse.

Recording information: Doppelherz Studio; Ocean Way, L.A; The Mix Room, Burbank, CA.

Photographer: Perou.

Arrangers: Marilyn Manson; Tim Skold.

Marilyn Manson proudly wears his musical influences on his band's fifth studio album, where the perpetually androgynous singer and company continue their crusade of industrial rock outrage, making nods to forerunners while never losing that which is quintessentially Manson. "mOBSCENE," reeks of ANGEL DUST-era Faith No More. "Para Noir" offers a romantic agenda in grand Manson style, with little chance for radio edit status. "Better Of Two Evils" and "Your Fist And Not Your Mouth" rally with undeniable choruses while "This Is The New Shit" nails a Korn-inflected groove. The set's down-tempo title track is built around a haunting piano line, and "(s)AINT" deftly captures the Powerman 5000 style. The album track most likely to get extensive re-mixing is the incredibly catchy "Ka-boom Ka-boom." THE GOLDEN AGE OF GROTESQUE drops yet another bomb on convention, and Marilyn Manson clearly planned it that way.

Timing is everything in pop music, and Marilyn Manson hit a zeitgeist in the mid-'90s with Antichrist Superstar, riding the post-alternative wave to the top of the charts with his dark, arty, industrial metal. He was a proud shock artist and a great interview, one of the few rockers of his time who stood his own against his attackers by offering articulate, informed counterarguments to their blustering rage. Like any shock rocker, though, the novelty wears thin fast, and what was once scary turns into self-parody. Manson, no stranger to rock history, attempted to circumvent this by turning quickly to the left with the glam-soaked Mechanical Animals, but in doing so he lost huge portions of his audience, and by the time he returned to scary industrial metal form on Holy Wood in 2000, he seemed out of date and few critics or fans paid attention. Three years later, he unleashed his fifth album, The Golden Age of Grotesque, and he still seemed out of step with the times, but there was a difference -- he sounded comfortable with that development. Also, by 2003, rock, particularly heavy metal, was in desperate need of artists with a grand vision and ambition, which Manson has in spades. After all, The Golden Age is designed to be a modern update of German art, vaudeville, and decadent Hollywood glamour of the '30s, all given a thudding metallic grind, of course. In an era when heavy rockers have no idea what happened in the '80s, much less the '30s, it's hard not to warm to this, even if his music isn't your own personal bag.

Musically, Manson isn't departing from his basic sound -- he's following through on the return to basics Holy Wood represented -- but his first self-production has resulted in an album that feels light and nimble, even though it's drenched in distortion and screams. It feels as if Manson now feels liberated from not being consistently in the spotlight, and his music has opened up as well. With that new freedom, he gets silly on occasion -- the gibberish on the ridiculously titled "This Is the New S***," the appropriation of Faith No More's "Be Aggressive" for "mOBSCENE," the lyric "You are the church/I am the steeple/When we f*ck we are God's People" -- but instead of knocking the record off track, they are part of the big picture on this oversized album. What matters here, as it always does on a Marilyn Manson album, is the overarching concept, and while The Golden Age of Grotesque has some kind of theme, its particulars aren't discernible, but the overall feeling resonates strongly. This messy, unruly, noisy burlesque may fall on its face, but it puts itself in the position where it can either stand or fall, and, unlike in the past, Manson isn't taking himself so seriously that he sounds stiff. It all adds up to a very good album -- maybe not his best, and certainly not one that will attract the most attention, but it's a hell of a lot grander than what his peers are producing, and holds its own with his previous records. It's also a bit more fun, too, and that counts for a lot. [The Golden Age of Grotesque was also released in a "clean" version, containing no profanities.] ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine

Rolling Stone (5/29/03, p.62) - 3 stars out of 5 - "...[Manson] excels at absorbing what's out there and distilling it through his anti-charisma until it's simultaneously fresh and putrid..."

Entertainment Weekly (5/16/03, p.72) - "...[The album] finds a middle ground between the pseudo-glam glory of MECHANICAL ANIMALS and the noisier backsliding of HOLY WOOD....Inventive..." - Grade: B-