The self -proclaimed Antichrist ended up in a world last week that, or at least his philosophy, corresponds to him in a scary way. The day when Marilyn Manson is doing an appearance on German soil for the first time in seven long years is the day when the powerful of the most powerful cancel the old world order and lose their lives in a terrorist attack, all just a few kilometers Removed from Munich Zenith, where Manson on Thursday for, well, you can say that that had your comeback celebrated. Marilyn Manson is on tour again and he travels a world that is still in rapid decay with her moral, cultural and bourgeois abysses. A decay that has always been reflected in the art figure Marilyn Manson and her work created by Brian Warner.
But something is different in February 2025, because this time it is not only the outer world that is in ruins, but for the most part also its own. In 2021, massive allegations against Manson, who have not really been cleared to this day, became loud, even if they have now been legally laid down. Against Manson, abuse and rape initiations were raised, which he had denied sharply, but nevertheless led to the label and management at the door and Manson retired completely for years. Now he is back, with a new plate in his luggage and an almost completely sold out European tour. After his concert in Munich, Berlin is now on the plan.
Marilyn Manson – the complete concert:
There is still snow on the streets and in front of the completely sold-out Columbiahalle, a female Manson lookalike fan girl, who does not have a valid ticket and is not allowed in the hall. In the hall, on the other hand, old metalheads with metallica cowls, tapped scene girls, millennial nostalgic, fetish people and one or the other lost soul have gathered. The question that arises that evening is the question of which Marilyn Manson Brian Warner will present to us today. The insightful artist who reflects himself and his past or the ego-against-the-rest-der-world-Manson. Well, maybe the question arises only to the authors of these lines, because the much bigger rest cheered Manson frenetically on the stage, whatever it wants to come.
“You tried to take me away”
The curtain falls on time at 9 p.m. and Manson is on stage with his partly newly formed band to answer the question in the first seconds. Definitely he begins his set with “Nod When Your Right”: No Reason to Ask Forgiveness / Pain is the Language that Was Spoken to me / and now it’s my time to Answer. A song, representative of his entire last album, “One Assassination Under God”, which in total is a sharp reply to the allegations that Manson was exposed.
The title of the title that was celebrated under God’s eyes is logical, the assassination attempt on his reputation, he stylized himself as a victim of a large -scale campaign against him. Accordingly, he welcomes the audience in Berlin with a fraternization: “They tried to take me away, they tried to take you away,” complains Manson. “But they didn’t make it,” he says defiantly and apparently also really firmly in order to then play “disposable teens” and to completely dive into a dark world of show, hatred and pain.
One asassination under God:
At the latest with the hypnotic “Tourniquet” he has the audience in his spell, there is no longer any distance between artists and crowd in the columbiahalle, Marilyn Manson is now completely with himself. And his audience with him. This is also not a matter of course that evening. In the middle 1990s and early 2000s, Manson was an instance, a dark prophet of the Rock’n’roll, which underpined its abysmality with an impressive, philosophical depth. The social, political and human abysses were the artistic essence in his work, only at some point the story was countered by a morally-in-together conservative America. At the latest when his once sincerely anger on the hypocritical entertainment system, only gave a pose because he had long since become a profiteer.
At the latest after “The Golden Age of Grotesque” (2003), in which Manson had increased from a Zirzensian grotesque, to a fascist-over-the aestheticism, he had also come to an end creatively. The shock rocker has exhausted all effects, drawn every picture, illuminated every abyss, the narrative had come to an end. From this point Manson was a searcher who no longer found his role. Sometimes he tried bluesy, almost Bowiesk on “The Pale Empereor” (2015), then experimentally reduced at “We Are Chaos” (2020), but became streamlined from album to album. In this phase, six good, sometimes really very good albums, were created, which no longer corresponded to the principle of artistic destruction in order to still work in the world of Marilyn Manson.
This is the new shit:
Correspondingly, Manson in Berlin also completely clings to this phase of his work between 2007 and 2024. He only plays songs from the golden era between “Antichrist Superstar” (1996) to “The Golden Age of Grotesque” (2003) and places six of his new songs next to it. The show that Manson delivers is fantastic. Manson, now Clean, is so good, so physically present that he no longer has to hide behind show shock effects and costumes, his pure physical presence is wearing the entire evening. The stage design only consists of a pair of converted light crosses and some artificial fog. Manson coats, gestures wildly, cuts grimaces, screams, chip, roars, sings with the aura of a dark priest, catches up with the audience that celebrates him euphorically, gets rid of it again. In “This Is The New Shit” and “Mobscene”, the audience is louder in places than the band, which brutally plays orange with guitarist Reba Meyers and gives Manson’s performance an oppressive, insane sound carpet.
And suddenly the border of art and reality blurs
When he started his interpretation of “Sweet Dreams” towards the end of the evening, the bass of ex-Rob Zombie-Bandmember Piggy D presses one against the wall, it can initially no longer be distinguished whether he or the audience singing the piece Towards the end the lines “Some of Them Want To Use You / Some of Them Want To Get Used by You / Some of Them Want To Abuse You / Some of Them Want To Be Abuse” roars from deepest soul, he dominates Again the show and makes it very clear that this is not just entertainment, but also about him, about his position in the world that he wants to go back.
Manson never has art as an answer, but always understood as an instrument, as a form, to question supposed certainties. He now does this by contradicting the media prejudice, which he felt exposed to, against being a victim of false allegations. Not only his new album, but also his entire show is permeated, and yes, this creates great art, which is again relevant for the first time in a long time, as you could see that evening. Because yes, Warner is always particularly good when he stands in front of the ruins of a world that he can put together again. It is almost grotesque that it had to be the debris in his world that needed it to artistically put it back into the underdog status that he needs to perform at top musical performance.
The facade is still in Berlin
But should it be the case that this time he is not just putting together the debris, but he was also the one who is responsible for it, Marilyn Manson should one day collapse a construct before Brian Warner.
And what would remain of the big show and the staged excess, that is just the unvarnished tragedy. The facade is still in Berlin. And the show continues.