>>128393910 (OP)
A mixed-bag.
>Antichrist Superstar
Has some fun and intense moments, but starts to drag ("Mr. Superstar" doesn't need to be on here, and "Minute of Decay" and "The Man That You Fear" I can't bother with on the rare occasions I listen to this), and sometimes apes NIN in a boring way ("Reflecting God"). To its credit, it's more interesting lyrically than The Downward Spiral; I'll take half-baked Nietzsche over teenage angst.
>Mechanical Animals
Actually great the whole way through. The only mature lyrics in his whole discography, and the only album that confidently combines satire with pathos. Decent aping of Bowie, Pink Floyd, Kiss, the Knack, and so on for effect. A shame he didn't learn anything from this album, since he turned into the very Hollywood personality he spends half of it shitting on.
>Holywood
Good moments, but drags way too much, and this starts the transformation into the whiny goth Manson that continued with on Eat Me, Drink Me. The Come White re-write adds nothing, "The Nobodies" sounds like a parody of himself, and the lyrics start getting too cluttered with references to freemasonry, hermeticism, and tarot. Songs like "The Fight Song" aren't terrible, but he starts sounding too much like the soundtrack for terrible late-90s teen movies.
>Golden Age of the Grotesque
Sounds like the terrible alt-rock/ nu-metal/ post-grunge of the period. "Doll-Dagga" is a boring re-write of "Dopehat," "Mobscene" is a lazy re-write of "The Fight Song," and all the meta-irony in the world doesn't stop "This Is The New Shit" from being dumb garbage. Skold and John 5 are boring songwriters, Manson's lyrics are just terrible and overly impressed with coining dumb puns, and the interest in dada is risable in never manifesting in the music. 80s Butthole Surfers did the musical dada thing way better. Terrible album from start to finish.
