Antichrist Superstar

• Release date: October 8, 1996
• Genre: Industrial rock, Noise rock
• Length: 77:26
• Label: Nothing, Interscope
• Written by: Marilyn Manson, Twiggy Ramirez, M.W. Gacy, Daisy Berkowitz, Trent Reznor

Track List

Introduction

It was about a dark, twisted, vitiated creature's evolution from a childhood spent living in fear to an adulthood spent sowing fear, from a weakling to a megalomaniac, from a shit-eater to a shit-kicker, from a worm to a world-destroyer. - MARILYN MANSON SUMMARIZING THE ALBUM IN HIS AUTO BIOGRAPHY THE LONG HARD ROAD OUT OF HELL

The story of Antichrist Superstar is about a person who lives a miserable life under the regime of a rotten society. After an epiphany of realizing how broken the society is, the protagonist begins a process of transforming into a powerful rebel to bring forth the destruction of society, but in the process becomes a monster, and pays for it with the destruction of the self.

This transformation is represented by a metamorphosis from The Worm (a weakling parasite which morbidly depends on its host, and also a representation of festering resentment that eats away at its host) to an angel of death and destruction (the Antichrist). The reason why The Worm seems to symbolize two discrete things is because weakness and resentment are linked. People who have the strength of will to set boundaries against others and to enforce them when needed tend to be less resentful than those who don't, because by not letting people walk all over them, they don't accumulate a history of past injustices to be angry about. It's those who can't stand up for themselves when being mistreated who end up cultivating a collection of grievances that transform into resentment. So, throughout the album's lyrics the worm takes on both roles. Sometimes it's the weak and contemptable creature everybody tramples over, and sometimes it's this sinister corrupting force that invades a host and eats it from the inside.

There is also a third "character" in the album's mythology, and that is the worms as a conspiring group that plots to inaugurate one of their own into power. Mentions of this group are spread throughout the songs, where we see them pulling the strings from a safe distance. The story of Antichrist is cyclical. When one Antichrist ends, another one rises, yet the cabal of worms remains constant across repetitions. In a way, the cabal of worms is akin to a force of nature that acts on the world, which is similar to the evil-as-a-force-of-nature characterization that Anton Szandor LaVey attributed to the concept of evil in The Satanic Bible.

The album's story is semi auto biographical since key parts of the story and its metaphors parallel Manson's life up to the point of the recording. Manson was very aware that by walking the path of becoming a controversial rock star, he was transforming himself to something that is removed from normal society. Someone who is more of an archetype than a person, someone who will be at war with the rest of the world, someone who will not be able to go back to his old life after some unknown threshold is passed, and he had plenty of mixed feelings about it. This is why the album is filled with moments of self-doubt, and with warning messages that could just as easily apply to the protagonist himself as to the society that's about to birth the Antichrist. In interviews Manson talked about the concept of a "personal apocalypse", which is a fitting metaphor for making the one-way transition from Brian Warner to Marilyn Manson, and that is why, once the Antichrist achieves his goal of destroying the old order, he experiences his own destruction as well, which is dramatized in the final song of the album.

The album burrows some symbolism from The Book of Revelation, is spiritually influenced by Anton Szendor LaVey (the founder of the Church of Satan) who was an initiating figure in Manson's life, and Friedrich Nietzsche's work. Some of the artwork takes its symbolism from the Tarot, Numerology, and the Kabbalistic book Tetragrammaton: The Secret to Evoking Angelic Powers and the Key to the Apocalypse by Donald Tyson. The name of the album is a play on Jesus Christ Superstar, a Christian Rock opera.

The album was recorded in 1996 at a studio in New Orleans. In his autobiography Manson describes the writing and recording period as a difficult time for the band, which was consumed with a self-destructive behavior that included drugs, alcohol, and property damage. This behavior greatly inhibited the work on the album and severely strained their personal relationship with one another. One of the founding members of the band, guitarist Daisy Berkowitz (real name Scott Mitchell Putesky), left the band during this time due to deteriorating relationship with the band and severe creative differences. According to Manson, the band was close to breaking up during the recording of this album.

In the end, all that pain and chaos had produced a powerful result. The album debuted at number 3 on the Billboard 200 and propelled the band to international stardom. The Dead to The World tour that followed became the band's most hectic and notorious to this day. It was faced with heavy opposition from Christian organizations that included big protests and even bomb threats against the band. Through that tour, Manson played out his role as the Antichrist, who destroys society by overturning its values, in real life.

Anton Szandor LaVey and The Church of Satan

Anton Szandor LaVey was an American musician, author, and philosopher who founded his own version of the religion of Satanism. The core tenets and philosophies of this religion are described in The Satanic Bible, his first publication about the topic. Despite the controversial implications of naming his religion "Satanism", LaVey's Satanism doesn't actually include a belief in Satan as a deity, or involve any blood sacrifices to the forces of evil. Rather, it is best viewed as a philosophy that opposes the way in which Christianity and similar religions defines human nature as sinful, and encourages people to live for a future afterlife, instead for the here and now. The name "Satanism" is therefore a statement of opposition to a religion that calls itself "good", not a statement of embracing that which is evil. In response to being asked why he chose to define his Satanism as a religion, rather than just a philosophy, LaVey cited the importance of fantasy in facilitating the adoption of ideas on an emotional level:

It is one thing to accept something intellectually, but to accept the same thing emotionally is an entirely different matter. The one need that psychiatry cannot fill is man's inherent need for emotionalizing through dogma. Man needs ceremony and ritual, fantasy and enchantment. Psychiatry, despite all the good it has done, has robbed man of wonder and fantasy which religion, in the past, has provided. Satanism, realizing the current needs of man, fills the large grey void between religion and psychiatry. The Satanic philosophy combines the fundamentals of psychology and good, honest emotionalizing, or dogma. It provides man with his much needed fantasy. There is nothing wrong with dogma, providing it is not based on ideas and actions which go completely against human nature.
--Anton Szandor LaVey, The Satanic Bible.

Manson was a big fan of LaVey's work, and at some point, even met him. LaVey was apparently just as impressed with Manson as Manson was with him, and he made him an honorary reverend in the Church of Satan as a gift. Antichrist Superstar carries the spirit of LaVey's Satanism by taking a position of opposition to the Christian morals on which American society is based, and by preaching for living life to the fullest, rather than being shackled by outdated morals. The song The Reflecting God best epitomizes these sentiments.

The Nine Satanic Statements

1. Satan represents indulgence, instead of abstinence!
2. Satan represents vital existence, instead of spiritual pipe dreams!
3. Satan represents undefiled wisdom, instead of hypocritical self-deceit!
4. Satan represents kindness to those who deserve it, instead of love wasted on ingrates!
5. Satan represents vengeance, instead of turning the other cheek!
6. Satan represents responsibility to the responsible, instead of concern for psychic vampires!
7. Satan represents man as just another animal, sometimes better, more often worse than those that walk on all-fours, who, because of his "divine spiritual and intellectual development", has become the most vicious animal of all!
8. Satan represents all of the so-called sins, as they all lead to physical, mental, or emotional gratification!
9. Satan has been the best friend the church has ever had, as he has kept it in business all these years!

Friedrich Nietzsche

Nietzsche was a German philosopher who wrote about morality, human nature, and nihilism. Certain catch phrases associated with his philosophy, such as "God is dead", "will to power", and the concept of the Übermensch- the superman- led to his philosophy being co-opted by various groups, who in all likelihood did not understand what he was really writing about. Such was the case when his ideas of the Übermensch and will to power appealed to the Nazi party, and such is the case even today that his proclamation that "God is dead" makes people categorize him as a champion for atheism, when in reality Nietzsche's proclamation was not triumphant, but horrified:

God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?
--The Gay Science

Nietzsche's point was that by adopting the scientific view of the world, we had disrupted the supernatural foundation upon which the belief in God was founded. In other words, we killed God by destroying our ability to believe in him, and the repercussions of that, according to Nietzsche, are that we have destroyed the source of all meaning itself. For many years, the belief in God supplied to us a framework upon which we could project the inner workings of our psyche, and make some sort of sense of it. Whenever humanity found itself struggling with profound questions such as "what should be our morals" and "what should we value in life", questions that required an answer but for which we had neither the necessary knowledge nor the computational brain power to objectively calculate one, the idea of God filled in that void with an answer that was at least functional enough to keep us going, even if rationally we weren't justified in trusting it. Now that science took away from us the ability to use that answer, humanity found itself without an emotional compass, leaving us with nihilism.

Nietzsche's idea of how to get us out of this mess was that humanity will have to invent its own meaning and morality, and that's where the concept of the Übermensch comes into play. Nietzsche's conception of the Übermensch is as the next stage in humanity's moral evolution. A creature who does not follow the morality of common people, but rather rises above the notion of good and evil that are rooted in superstition, and creates new values.

I teach you the Übermensch. Man is something that shall be overcome. What have you done to overcome him? All beings so far have created something beyond themselves: and you want to be the ebb of that great tide, and would rather go back tothe beast than overcome man? What is the ape to man? A laughing-stock or a painful embarrassment. And just the same shall man be to the Übermensch: a laughing-stock or a painful embarrassment. You have made your way from worm to man, and much within you is still worm. Once you were apes, and even yet man is more of an ape than any ape. [...] Man is a rope stretched between the animal and the Übermensch—a rope over an abyss... What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal: what is lovable in man is that he is an over-going and a going under.
--Thus Spoke Zarathustra

On Antichrist Superstar, the Antichrist can be seen as an incarnation of the Übermensch, or at the very least someone who attempts to play the Übermensch's role. He is the next stage in mankind's evolution, come to destroy the old ways and ideals, and replace them with his own ethic. Yet the further he progresses in his plan, the further he descend to the nihilism Nietzsche warned about. Nietzsche's metaphor of a transformation from a worm to a man is akin to the transformation of worm to Antichrist that Manson is using throughout the album. Lastly, the story of Antichrist Superstar is a case study in another famous Nietzschean quote:

He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster, when you gaze long into the abyss the abyss also gazes into you.
--Beyond Good And Evil

Song Analysis

Cycle I: The Heirophant

The first section of the album focuses on the protagonist's backstory as a victim of an oppressive and corrupt society. It opens with a teaser for the middle of the story (track: Irresponsible Hate Anthem), before going back to the beginning with the following three songs to show us how the story begins.

The name of this cycle seems to be a portmanteau of "heir" and "hierophant". Hierophant is an ancient Greek word for a person who brings religious congregants into the presence of something holy. A common motif in Manson's work is equating religious concepts with cultural entities (the martyr as a modern Christ, the Rockstar as the Antichrist, music as a form of spirituality, fame as a form of divinity, etc.), so in this case, The Hierophant would be a reference to the story's protagonist himself, who through rebellion achieves fame and a following, and brings his "worshippers" into the presence of (his version of) holy.

This cycle's name replaces "Hier" for the English word "Heir". The word "hierophant" is constructed from the combination of ta hiera, "the holy," and phainein, "to show", so "Heirophant" would be someone who shows the heir. The heir in this case is once again the protagonist, who inherits his circumstance from society. The final song in the album brings some credence to this interpretation, with the following lyrics: "I was born into this, everything turns to shit".

Irresponsible Hate Anthem

One curious detail about this song is that the liner notes state it was recorded live on February 14, 1997 (Valentine's Day), even though the album was released on October 8, 1996 and is a studio recording. This sets the track to be in the (then) future, which is in-line with the fact that conceptually it seems to be ahead of the story. The chronology of Antichrist Superstar follows the protagonist from a low life to a powerful figure whose power becomes all consuming, but Irresponsible Hate Anthem is set at a point where the protagonist is already powerful- a charismatic Rock star with a following and a message of rebellion. As stated in the introduction to this cycle, this is akin to the old literary trick of throwing the reader into the middle of the story before going back to the beginning to show us how we got there.

The song starts with the words "When you are suffering, know that I had betrayed you", which, as we discover later on, are the words that seal the album, revealing that the story of Antichrist Superstar is cyclical. When one iteration of this story ends, another one begins. On the first listen though, these words act as a foreshadowing of what is about to happen.

This song was the first instance of Manson giving Valentine's Day a special significance:

• On February 14, 2000, a cover of Charles Manson's Sick City was released through a podcast via MarilynManson.com.
• On February 14, 2001, Chapter 10 of the as-of-yet unreleased Holy Wood novel was released through ThisAsValentinesDay.com.
• On February 14, 2002, two video clips entitled "I Love You With All of My Heart" and "I Will Love You Until I Die" respectively were released though MarilynManson.com. Both clips depicted Manson's cat Lily White.
• On February 14, 2003, the first picture of the band's new appearance during The Golden Age of Grotesque era were presented on the band's official website. The photo was accompanied by a short movie clip named "The Mechanism of Desire", which depicted the band's new look but also Manson's then fiancée Dita Von Teese.
• On February 14, 2005, the remake of the "The Nobodies" video that would accompany the 2005 re-release of the single was leaked on the Universal Music website. It remains unknown whether this was meant as a gift or if the leak was accidental.
• Although these plans did not materialize, Manson had expressed interest in releasing the band's 2009 album The High End of Low on February 14, 2009.

The track opens with Manson getting the crowd to chant "we hate love, we love hate", before the song officially begins. I consider it an ironic illustration of how opposing something brings people together. In an interview with Guitar School, Manson said that he named the song Irresponsible Hate Anthem, because he predicted that this is how people who believe that the band is hateful would describe the song.

To summarize: this track takes place in the middle of the story and introduces us to our hierophant, the Rock star protagonist with a following, who preaches against the established social order. At the end of the track, we go back to the beginning of the story.

The song ends with a sample played backwards as a segue to the next track. I call it the "going back in time" sample, as I find it fitting that a sample that is played from end to beginning takes us back to the beginning of the story.

The Beautiful People

This is the first track that deals with the story's beginning, showing us the abuse that the protagonist had to endure from society before eventually having an epiphany later in the album and going into rebellion. This song is about "the fascism of beauty". In this case "beauty" is used symbolically. Those who are powerful, who have influence, who are famous, who are popular, are the ones who are beautiful and envied. They are also the ones who end up dictating things to those who are not. Set to a rigid, militant drum pattern, this song presents an extreme version of that, as experienced by the protagonist.

In an interview, Manson had the following to say on the inspiration of the song:

The term 'The Beautiful People' was inspired by a book that came out in the mid-'60s. It was about the Kennedys, politics and fashion at the time. The whole culture of beauty as being created at the time. We live in a world where the culture of beauty is taken for granted, but it didn't exist in the same way in the '60s. Then Charles Manson and his 'family' took that culture, hated it and reacted against it. In many ways his reaction is the same as mine, but I'm playing with it from both sides. I make things glamorous as a revolt to glamour.

The chord choice in this song is based on the notes of a diminished triton, which is nicknamed "diabolus in musica" ("the devil in music") due to its dissonant and "evil" sound.

Samples

The Charles Manson tangent in the above quote is not incidental. The song starts with a very distorted sample of Tex Watson (one of the members of Charles Manson's "family") declaring "[We would] swoop down on the town...[and] kill everyone that wasn't beautiful", taken from the Manson family trials.

Dried Up, Tied and Dead to The World

According to Manson, of all the songs on the album (some of which were written about the past, and some about the future) this was the only one that was inspired by the [then] present. It is heavily influenced by the location where Antichrist Superstar was recorded: New Orleans, which Manson frequently describes in his autobiography as a social cesspool filled with drug addicts. It is also inspired by the self-destructive behavior that accompanied the recording of the album, which involved lots of drinking, drug use, and property destruction. But mostly, this is a song that deals with the abusive relationships that come out of unhealthy dependency.

This song introduces a musical motif. It begins with the same riff that starts the song Mister Superstar in the second cycle. Mister Superstar also deals with an unhealthy addiction/obsession with someone, but this time instead of being the addicted one, the protagonist is the one others are addicted to. Him becoming the target of the same addiction he suffered from himself is just one symptom of him becoming more like the thing he is fighting.

The phrase "dead to the world" actually means "sleeping very deeply". However, I think that in this song, Manson is using it as an imagery, rather than in its idiomatic sense, because I don't think he intended to call the tour for the album the "sleeping very deeply" tour. However, see the analysis for the song The Reflecting God for a possible idiomatic interpretation.

Tourniquet

This song starts with a back masked sample of Manson saying: "this is my lowest point of vulnerability". In his autobiography, Manson said that he put it there to create "a distress call heard by no one but myself". The song describes a deteriorating relationship between two broken people who use each other to mask psychological wounds. The music alternates between dissonance (brokenness) and dark ambience (intimacy), and like the backmasked sample, this song represents a breaking point: In the song, the protagonist tries to reconnect with his lost innocence by restoring his damaged girlfriend's innocence. When he is unable to do that, and his attempts yield contempt rather than the desired innocence, he basically loses the battle for his own innocence as well.

Cycle II: Inauguration of The Worm

After learning who our protagonist is and what life he came from, this second cycle is about his rise to power. The journey from a weak worm to a powerful Antichrist. It begins with a moment of rage (Little Horn); a moment of realization of how he was treated, and the decision to rise to power and destroy society. What follows is a transformative journey that is rife with self-doubt, wrestling with personal demons, and the rising fear that this path is leading him to his demise.

Little Horn

The title of this song is a biblical reference. In the Book of Daniel, the prophet Daniel sees a vision of a "little horn" that grows out of a terrible beast. The horn catches his attention due to its unusual attributes (such as having eyes and mouth), and Daniel asks an angel about his vision. The angel explains that the horn represents a king that will rise to power and "will speak against the most high and oppress his holy people". He will seek to change times and laws, and he will exert oppressive power over God's people. Various clues about this king, such as when he will rise to power, how long he will reign, and later appearance in the Book of Revelation, imply that this little horn represents the Antichrist.

Some of the lyrics in this song reference a dream Manson had about a post-apocalyptic future in Fort Lauderdale. In this dream most of humanity had been turned into zombies for the entertainment of a small elite. There was a strip club where they had reanimated female corpses and made them dance naked in cages made of thick metal bars. Their flesh was covered in boils and gnarled veins, and their hair was falling out in clumps. Their jaws had been wired shut so that they wouldn't bite off the penises of the men around them masturbating.

Within the context of the album, this song acts as multiple things. It's a moment of revelation for the protagonist, who becomes conscious of the corruption and depravity he is living in. He is filled with motivative anger as a result of this epiphany. A lot of this anger is expressed through the music, as this is one of the most aggressive songs on the album. This song is also a prophecy of the apocalypse to come, and it's a bit of a warning to himself and to the world.

Cryptorchid

Cryptorchid refers to an abnormal medical condition of the male anatomy in which one or both testicles have failed to sink into the scrotum. The testicles are a masculine metaphor for courage, so the condition is used as a metaphor for the protagonist's self-doubt. At one point in the song Manson actually says: "I wish I had my balls".

This song is a point of transformation. In the album's artwork there is a sequence of photos that includes: the protagonist as a worm, Manson emergint out of a cocoon, and the rise of the Antichrist as an angel with scabbed wings. In other words, the process of transformation from worm to angel is represented by gestating inside of a cocoon, and Cryptorchid is the song that represents this transformation musically. When it starts, it employs many of the sound tropes that are used to describe gestating inside of a biological entity: an irregular heartbeat pattern (simulated by drums), and ambience consisting of soft sounds, as if whatever sounds reach us from the outside world are severely muffled by a layer of flesh and fluid. Then near the end of the song there's a drastic musical shift. The loud and inconsistent heart beat pattern is replaced by a simple, steady, and quiet pattern. The complex ambient soundscape of the song is replaced by a much cleaner ambient layer that has a roomy feeling to it, and a quiet yet uplifting quality. Together, the musical cues suggest that our consciousness has expanded to include more than our own self, because that is the point when the antichrist breaks out of the cocoon.

It might be surprising that the song that represents the transformation from the worm to the angel comes so early in the cycle, but this concept is validated later in the lyrics of the song Wormboy, that say "when will you realize you're already there? You'll thank us now that you have crossed over", and in the lyrics of the song Kinderfeld, which say "then I got my wings and I never really knew it". It will be a while before the protagonist comes to terms with the fact that he already took the step towards becoming the Antichrist, and the rest of this cycle is essentially about him realizing this and growing into his new role.

The working title for this song was "Little Black Spots".

Deformography

The title of this track is an amalgam of "deform" and "graphic". If the name reminds you a bit of "pornography", that's somewhat intentional, since the original title of this song was "P Is For Porno".

This song is about how you can get so caught up in wanting to become an ideal that it can twist you into something unhealthy. In this song, the protagonist becomes so obsessed with the ideal that is the Antichrist Superstar that he degenerates into uninhibited lust that overrides his self-preservation. He begins doing things that are clearly unhealthy for him just to get closer to this powerful angel of destruction that he adores, and reaches a point in which he is perfectly willing to destroy himself and his ideal rather than let someone else have it.

"But wait", I hear you say, "didn't he just metamorphize into the angel in the previous song? Why is he acting like the ideal of the antichrist is something other than himself?" First of all, an ideal is a concept, it's by definition something other than yourself. But also, as we will see in subsequent songs, he doesn't yet realize that he is already the antichrist, so he still spends his time idolizing and dreaming of becoming one.

Wormboy

Of all the songs on the album, this is the one that had the most input from Daisy Berkowitz, the co-founder guitarist who left during the recording of the album, and who was essentially responsible for the band's original musical style. Since Manson and the rest of the band wanted to ditch their original style in favor of a new direction, this song is considered by Manson to be the black sheep of the album.

Lyrically, it's about the protagonist wrestling with himself, trying to push himself to commit to the role he chose to pursue. It's the moment when he finally agrees to be the rock star, the rebel, the Antichrist, and the songs that follow already deal with his newfound fame.

The working title for this song was Wormboy Gets His Wings.

At the beginning of the song there's a backmasking of Manson whispering something about the worm. It's severely chopped up, so I was never able to figure it out completely, but I seem to be able to make out the words "kill yourself" and "against the worm".

Mister Superstar

This song is about his fans morbidly obsessing over him. It's the first "what have I gotten myself into" song on the album. It mirrors the obsession the protagonist felt towards others when he was weak as described in the song Dried Up, Tied and Dead To The World, but now the protagonist is the strong one, and others lust after him much in the same way. The connection with Dried Up, Tied and Dead To The World is represented by the fact that both songs start with the same riff. Most of the lyrics in this song (except the chorus) are said from the point of view of the obsessive fans.

Angel with The Scabbed Wings

Here he is, the angel of destruction. The Antichrist himself. We are now almost at the end of this cycle, past the process of transformation and the self-doubt. Meet the creature you've been aiming for.

This song mostly describes what the Antichrist is. It's a fantasy, an ideal, powerful, magnificent, nihilistic, and destructive. He is the subject of worship by those who don't see the reality behind the fantasy, nor truly understand what they are dealing with.

Fun trivia: the opening riff is a slowed down version of a riff taken from the musical Jesus Christ Superstar.

Kinderfeld

The word Kinderfeld is German for "Field of Children", and it's likely a reference to the American Kinderfeld in Frankfurt, Germany, which is a cemetery for American children who died before the age of two. After the end of World War II Frankfurt was used as headquarters for the Allied Forces, and many families of American soldiers moved into the city. The rule at the time was that the government would only pay to ship deceased bodies over the age of two for burial in the United States, so any baby that was stillborn or died too young had to be buried locally, hence the cemetery.

This song predates Antichrist Superstar by a significant amount. It was originally written and played during the tour for their "Smells Like Children" EP (this was also the song's working title), and in its initial form it was just a creepy song inspired by Manson's grandfather Jack Warner. The overarching theme of the Smells Like Children EP was the loss of innocence, and this song explored this theme through Jack's sexual deviancy, to which Manson was exposed at a young age.

Manson's grandfather had a cellar which was off limits to everybody but him. That was where he went to indulge in his many fetishes, and it was filled with things such as bestiality pictures, watersports magazines (not the athletic kind of watersports), fetish gear like enemas and women's clothing, dildos, porn movies, Vaseline, condoms, and a toy train, which he would turn on when he was masturbating. Manson and his cousin Chad were both fascinated by Jack's underground world, and the first chapter in Manson's autobiography describes their stealthy excursions into it. In one particular event, Jack suddenly came back into the cellar while they were in it, and they were forced to hide behind the desk while he was masturbating to avoid being caught.

As the song made it into Antichrist Superstar, it could've easily been part of the first cycle, since it speaks about a childhood experience. However, here it appears pretty far in the story, right before the last cycle. Why is that? The reason can be found in Manson's autobiography, where there's a passage which describes him meeting his family at his cousin Chad's wedding. This was when he was well into his rock star career, and in the novel Manson describes the disconnect he felt from most of his family- the "normal" people- and how the person he felt the most comfortable with was his dead grandfather Jack:

Everyone [in my family] I talked to asked if I was gay or a drug addict or a devil worshipper. No one had anything nice to say, and no one understood anything about me. I wasn't Brian Warner anymore, I was some kind of inexplicable and repulsive slime that had trickled out of a sewer and filthied their manicured lives. ... After the reception, we drove back to my grandmother's. As everyone sat in the living room drinking wine, eating crackers and struggling to say something interesting, I stole away and walked downstairs to my grandfather's basement. ... I didn't feel small and scared in the basement anymore. In fact, I felt at home for the first time since I had returned to canton. I had much more in common with my grandfather now than with the innocent kid who used to explore his basement, which was an upsetting realization in light of the fact that moments ago I had been sitting in church promising myself that i would never grow up. I even wore women's lingerie, like my grandfather did, and had engaged in sexual acts far more perverse than the ones in his watersports and anal only magazines. My grandfather had been the ugliest, darkest, foulest, most depraved figure of my childhood, more beast than human, and I had grown up to be him, locked in the basement with my secrets as the rest of the family reveled in the petty and ordinary upstairs.

So basically, the song is this far in the story because it correlates to the chronology of when Manson returned to his grandfather's basement. Lyrically, it is written as a collage of past and "present" events that serve as an introspection of the journey he took up to this point, right before we step into the final chapter.

Some lyrics in this song can be interpreted as if Jack was a pedophile:

• "He lives inside my mouth and tells me what to say."
  If there's domestic sexual abuse of children by a guardian figure, they would usually tell the children what to say in order to make them keep the secret.
• "The toys all smell like children".
  This can be interpreted as fetishistic obsession with the children. It also references the child catcher from the children's movie Chitty Chitty Bang Bang who had a large nose with which he could smell the hiding children.
• Then there's the lyric towards the end of the song describing Jack removing his pants and exposing his dick, followed by a small boy voice "there's no one here to save ourselves".

So, the song could work pretty well to describe that sort of situation. However, the official context derived from the autobiography is that it's really about Manson's horrified fascination with Jack and his realization into adulthood that he had become Jack. There has never been any indication that Jack was a pedophile.

Cycle III: Disintegrator Rising

In this third and final cycle, the Antichrist is at the height of his power, and proceeds to invoke his vengeance upon the world. It's the point when he crosses the line from a healthy rebellion to seeking destruction, and like a criminal who has done something so reprehensible he could never be forgiven for it, the repercussion for his humanity is that he is now past the point of no return. With each inhumane act he does, he becomes more and more beyond redemption, and even though he understands where he is going, he no longer has the luxury of stopping what he set in motion.

Antichrist Superstar

This song is where the Antichrist passes judgment on society. It starts with what I think is meant to be the sound of a church choir, and a sinister sound creeps in, representing the approach of the Antichrist. Then the heavy guitar takes over everything. He has arrived.

1996

This is the most noisy and chaotic song on the album. It opens with the sound of ticking (bomb?), and then there's an explosion of chaotic guitar noise. The song continues to be fast, aggressive, and filled with feedback and noise, and in my opinion represents the destruction the Antichrist wreaks on society. If this were a movie, this would be the scenes where the Antichrist and his minions walk around town destroying everything. Since this song is called "1996" and the album came out in 1996, that would place the timeline of the song in the then present of the album release.

The Minute of Decay

So far in this third cycle we've seen the Antichrist arrive and announce his power, and we've seen him wreak destruction. All displays of power. However, as explained in the introduction to this cycle, all this power does is gradually turning him into a monster, and removing him further away from humanity. He is well aware of where he is heading, and he does not approach this end lightly. In fact, this weighs heavily on him, and in this song, we see the depression this is plunging him into.

According to Manson's autobiography he started crying while recording the vocals for this track, since much like the story's protagonist he too was in considerable emotional anguish.

Samples

The song starts with a distorted sample "From a dead man, greetings", taken from the movie 1984. It's based on a novel of the same name by George Orwell that was written as a cautionary tale about the dangers of left-wing totalitarianism, specifically of the Communist variety. The quote is said by the story's protagonist, who privately questions the regime he is living under, and who understand that the very fact that he has these thoughts at all means that he is already dead, because it's only a matter of time until Big Brother finds out.

The Reflecting God

So, we had our private moment of weakness in the previous song, and now we're back to business, continuing with the master plan that has already gotten out of our control. This is the song where everything falls apart.

The song is orchestrated in a very cinematic fashion. Throughout most of it, we see a contrast between the protagonist preaching an uplifting message of liberation and living life to the fullest, and succumbing to megalomania and violence. What was once a fight for destroying the old ways in order to make room for something better, had transformed to simply a fight for destruction. The protagonist succumbed to the thing that Nietzsche warned about in Beyond Good And Evil, that "He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster", and finally, we reach the point of no return that the protagonist dreaded so much throughout the album.

Man That You Fear

The final official song on the album. This is the mourning for the boy who died to create the Antichrist, and for everything else that was lost.

Track 99 - Empty Sounds of Hate

Although officially a 16-song album, the CD actually had 99 tracks. Tracks 17-98 were empty, lasting about 4 seconds each. Track 99 was a hidden noise track. Though it had no official name upon release, and to this day many streaming services are listing it simply as "Untitled", it is pretty much unofficially official that the track's name is Empty Sounds of Hate. Most people who encountered this name probably did so with the help of track metadata that was obtained automatically by music player programs that were popular in the 90s. However, there actually exists a rare vinyl release of Antichrist Superstar that lists the track as Empty Sounds of Hate, and even categorizes it under Cycle VIII: Prolog/Epilog.

The track acts as both epilog and prolog to the record. It is an epilog because it's at the end of the record. It's a prolog, because it ends with the phrase that begins the record, essentially making the story of the Antichrist Superstar cyclical. When one instance of it plays out to the end, another one begins in a different place and time.

The track's content consists of multiple layers:

• A wall of noise that is actually the ending of Mister Superstar slowed down by 300%
• Breathing sounds that sound like they are coming from a suit.
• A distorted message that sounds like it is being relayed via radio communication with bad reception.
• A male voice uttering strange syllables.

The male voice uttering strange syllables is based on a technique employed in the TV show Twin Peaks. Twin Peaks follows the story of agent Dale Cooper who investigates the murder of Laura Palmer, a local teenage girl. On multiple occasions, Dale Cooper dreams of a strange room with red velvet curtains where everything is surreal. One of the things that made the room feel surreal was the unnatural way the people in the room talked. This effect was created by recording the actors speaking the dialogue backwards, and then reversing the audio. The result was speech that was comprehensible, but sounded very unnatural. On this track, Manson is doing the same thing, except that he is just speaking backwards, without reversing the audio, hence the speech sounds incomprehensible. If you do reverse the audio, you can hear the actual words:

The content of the distorted message is transcribed below:

Artwork

The album artwork makes multiple references to Tarot cards, Anton Szandor LaVey's Satanism, Tetragrammaton, and the album's lyrics and concepts.

Anton Szandor LaVey

The artwork in Antichrist Superstar makes multiple references to LaVey:

First, there's the red and black color scheme, which has become a sort of trademark of LaVey.

Then there's this image of Manson imitating LaVey's magazine appearance:

The Antichrist Superstar lightning bolt symbol on the slipcase is surrounded by the Hebrew word "Leviathan", which is used in the Church of Satan's Baphomet.

...and finally, the mysterious Roman numerals that appear on the slipcase are in my opinion a reference to the Satanic Bible's statements. Granted, we could never know for sure, and there have been various theories about what the meaning of these numbers is, but I opt for the Satanic Bible explanation simply because they appear in the most LaVey inspired image in the entire artwork:

The Satanic Bible statements that correspond to these numbers are:

9. Satan is the best friend the church has ever had, as he has kept it in business all of these years.
6. Satan represents responsibility to the responsible, instead of concern for psychic vampires.
3. Satan represents undefiled wisdom, instead of hypocritical self-deceit.
7. Satan represents man as just another animal, sometimes better, more often worse than those that walk on all-fours, who because of his "divine spiritual and intellectual development" has become the most vicious animal of all.

Alternate theories for IX VI III VII

For completeness, here are the other theories fans came up with regarding these numbers:

• When you multiply them, you get 9 * 6 * 3 * 7 = 1134, which reads like "hell" when viewed upside down.
• That they correspond to Tarot cards (III - The Empress, VI - The Lovers, VII - The Chariot, and IX - The Hermit).
  Since the Tarot makes multiple appearances in Manson's visual art (not just on Antichrist) this is a tempting interpretation. However, in my opinion this particular selection of Tarot cards doesn't seem to be thematically fitting with the album's concept.
• There are some really convoluted numerological theories that I'm not going to bother listing here since they border on insanity

Heart, Mind, Complacent, Malice

The cardboard slipcase that comes with the CD depicts two representations of the protagonist, one inspired by Anton Szandor LaVey, and another by the lyrics, depicting the angel of destruction. The angel of destruction part contains a circle with the words Heart, Mind, Complacent, Malice surrounding it, which was a subject of debate for many years among fans.

In a 2013 interview, graphical designer P.R. Brown, who designed the Antichrist Superstar artwork, as well as covers for Manson's subsequent 3 albums, shed some light on the matter by revealing a surprising truth: this particular part of the artwork didn't actually come from Manson himself.

In the interview he reveals that when he heard of the opportunity to design Manson's album artwork, he realized that sending him a portfolio of his past work wasn't going to work, since he mostly designed Jazz albums up until that point. So, he spent a weekend designing fictitious album covers for made-up bands and sent that to Manson instead.

"Those words [heart, mind, complacent, and malice] were on one of the fake album covers I sent to Manson originally," he explains. "I picked opposing ideals and turned them into a symbolic compass of sorts: Heart is the opposite of mind, and complacency is the opposite of malice. Strangely enough, all of those things fit into the concept of the album. The exact graphic I used for the fake albums was used for the final package. I'm pretty sure that's why Manson hired me for the design."

One way this graphic can be interpreted in light of the numbering near the words is that we start with emotion (heart), which is overtaken and subdued by the mind, which creates a static world of certainty that leads to complacency, and the only way to break out of it is to mess it up with malice. Having eliminated the structure and order that kept the chaotic emotions at bay, we then return to the dynamics of heart. The compass dial seems to point us somewhere around the malice part, which is fitting for the album.

The structure of the heart, mind, complacent, and malice circle is repeated on the other side of the package around the Shock symbol:

We can see that the position of the letters ל,ו,ת,ן correspond to the heart, mind, complacent, and malice words, while the letter י is where the circle is.

Begotten

Begotten is a horror movie made by E. Elias Merhige. It is famous for having a very distinct monochromatic visual aesthetic, and Manson was such a huge fan of it that he literally showed it to the album's visual artist P.R. Brown and told him to make the artwork look like the movie.

Tarot

The Heirophant or The Temperance

On the front cover of the CD case itself there's a depiction of the Antichrist angel, which some have theorized to be a reference to the 14th Tarot card The Temperance:

Undeniably, there are similarities: the wings, the arm positions, and also the leg position. At the same time, there are also some problems with this association:

• Although none of the Tarot references in the Antichrist Superstar artwork recreate all the symbolism of the Tarot cards, in this case there's a bit too much key symbolism from the Temperance card that is missing from the Antichrist version. Aside from the pose of the angel literally nothing else is recreated.
• The two windows that frame the angel are a prominent element of the image, and there's nothing like this in the Temperance card.
• Manson's hands appear to contain an unmistakable reference to another Tarot card, which is much more strongly referenced in the album: The Hierophant.

As you can see, Manson is making the same gesture with his left hand as the Hierophant, and also the two windows on each side of the angel can be seen as a mirroring of the two pillars on each side of the Hierophant. The right hand is also bent, like in the Hierophant card, but the left hand is a bit of a problem, since it points in the opposite direction. This might be explained as an adaptation of the card to the nature of the Antichrist:

The finger gesture of the Hierophant is an ancient sign of blessing. It has two fingers pointing up, and two pointing down, symbolizing a bridge between heaven and earth. By pointing his hand down instead, this can be seen as forming a bridge between hell and earth.

The Devil

On the back of the CD case is another Tarot reference, this time of a more obvious nature:

A key element of The Devil tarot card is the fact that the two humans are chained to him, and this is reflected in the Antichrist Superstar artwork in a more obscene way: the two band members are "chained" to Manson via the tubes that connect to his dick.

Biblical references

The Antichrist Superstar lightning bolt symbol seem to be inspired at least in part by this biblical quote:

"I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven" - Jesus Christ

The following bible passage is printed under the lyrics for Deformography:

23. And it shall come to pass, that from one new moon to another, and from one sabbath to another, shall all flesh come to worship before me, saith the LORD.

24. And they shall go forth, and look upon the carcasses of the men that have transgressed against me: for their worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be quenched; and they shall be an abhorring unto all flesh.

Tetragrammaton and Numerology

The Tetragrammaton is the four-letter Hebrew word יהוה, which is the sacred name of the God of Israel. The four letters, read from right to left, are 'yud', 'hei', 'vav' and 'hei'. While there is no official canonical way to pronounce it, it is generally accepted to be pronounced as "Yahweh". Some of the occult symbols in the Antichrist Superstar artwork are taken from Donald Tyson's occult manual TETRAGRAMMATON: THE SECRET TO EVOKING ANGELIC POWERS AND THE KEY TO THE APOCALYPSE. In that book, Tyson describes a series of symbols based on permutations of the tetragrammaton letters that corresponds to invoking or banishing various angels. The symbols are constructed by placing the letters of the tetragrammaton in a cross-like formation, and then tracing various paths between the letters.

The Antichrist Superstar artwork contains symbols from that book and correlates them with various band members by referencing their numerological number, astrological sign, and/or the zodiac element of their astrological sign. The numerological number of a person is constructed by assigning numbers to letters, and then summing the letters in a person's name. There are various methods for assigning numbers to letters, and the one used on Antichrist Superstar seems to be the Chaldean system, which is arranged as follows:

• 1 = A, Q, Y, I, J
• 2 = B, R, K
• 3 = G, C, L, S
• 4 = D, M, T
• 5 = E, H, N, X
• 6 = U, V, W
• 7 = O, Z
• 8 = F, P

If the result of a summation is more than one digit, the digits of the result are also summed ("reduced"), until we get a single digit. An exception for this is the numbers 11, 22, and 33, which are considered special "master" numbers.

So, in the case of the band members we get:

• Marilyn Manson
  • Numerological number: 4+1+2+1+3+1+5 + 4+1+5+3+7+5 = 17 + 34 = 1+7 + 3+4 = 8 + 7 = 15 = 1+5 = 6
  • Numerological number binary representation: 0110
  • Astrological sign: Capricorn ♑︎ (alternative symbol: ᵹ)
  • Zodiac element and its magical form: Earth ◻
• Twiggy Ramirez
  • Numerological number: 4+6+1+3+3+1 + 2+1+4+1+2+5+7 = 18 + 22 = 1+8 + 2+2 = 9 + 4 = 13 = 1+3 = 4
  • Numerological number binary representation: 0100
  • Astrological sign: Gemini ♊︎
  • Zodiac element and its magical form: Air ◯
• Madonna Wayne Gacy
  • Numerological number: 4+1+4+7+5+5+1 + 6+1+1+5+5 + 3+1+3+1 = 27 + 18 + 8 = 2+7 + 1+8 + 8 = 9 + 9 + 8 = 26 = 2+6 = 8
  • Numerological number binary representation: 1000
  • Astrological sign: Pisces ♓︎
  • Zodiac element and its magical form: Water ☾ (half-moon)

Symbol interpretation

All the symbols in Antichrist Superstar are for invoking angels (there are also symbols for banishing angels). All angels are of type "severity", sex female, and polarity moon. The symbols are constructed of the following sections:

The Hebrew numerals are:

1. א
2. ב
3. ג
4. ד
5. ה
6. ו
7. ז
8. ח
9. ט
10. י
20. כ
30. ל
40. מ
50. נ
60. ס
70. ע
80. פ
90. צ
100. ק
200. ר
300. ש
400. ת
500. ך
600. ם
700. ן
800. ף
900. ץ

HIhV: Invoking Vabashiah Sign: Capricorn Element: Earth Number: 6 (ו, 0110) Bottom: nI:cV:bIV Band member: Marilyn Manson	hVIH: Invoking Vamediah Sign: Pisces Element: Water Number: 8 (ח, 1000) Bottom: nVII:cX:bII Band member: M.W. Gacy	VHhI: Invoking Hiviah Sign: Gemini Element: Air Number: 4 (ד, 0100) Bottom: nVIII:CV:bVIII Band member: Twiggy Ramirez

So what is the point of these symbols? In his book on the Tetragrammaton Tyson mentions the legend of the Golem- a clay man created by Rabbi Loew. In order to bring the Golem to life, the Rabbi and his disciples provided the air, water, and fire elements. The Golem was earth. So, it's possible that the idea behind these symbols is a ritual in which Manson and two of his disciples provide the earth, water, and air elements in order to bring forth a creature of fire.

Beyond The Record

The Antichrist Superstar era was a very productive time for the band. In the following two years since the release of the album the band released their first tour documentary VHS (Dead To The World), an EP of remixes and live tracks called Remix & Repent, 3 singles, and produced 7 music videos, the most they had done in any other "era" since. During that time Manson also released his autobiography The Long Hard Road Out of Hell, and produced his first short film, a psychological thriller called Groupie.

Remix & Repent and Dead To The World

Both Remix & Repent, and the Dead To The World VHS, feature the same LaVey inspired red and black theme. Dead To The World in particular resembles the design of LaVey's early books on Satanism.

Groupie

Groupie was Manson's foray into cinema. It was filmed on a portable camera during a party at Manson's house, and it depicts a fan being tormented by Manson and other band members. According to Manson, a lot of the guests felt uncomfortable during the filming because they weren't sure if what they saw was genuine or acting.

Manson intended the full movie to be featured on Dead To The World, but Tony Ciulla, Manson's manager, urged him to shelve the movie, because he was worried that it will irreparably damage Manson's career. Very few people have reportedly seen the film, and it remained mostly shrouded in mystery. Still, an excerpt from the movie was featured in Dead To The World, a scene in which the fan is sitting on a chair crying and screaming as Manson taunts her offscreen and makes her recite "Jesus loves me because the bible tells me so".

Some of the mystery about the movie was lifted in 2021, when the actress who played the fan gave an interview describing how the movie came to be, and dispelling some rumors about it (such as the rumor that she was dead).

New stage name

During the album's recording sessions, the severe creative and personal differences between Daisy Berkowitz (the band's guitar player and co-founder) and the rest of the band reached an all-time high, forcing Berkowitz to resign. His replacement, Zim Zum, was the first member in the band's history who did not receive a stage name based on a female starlet and male serial killer (although it was discovered in retrospect that there are some people from this formula one can attach to the stage name). Instead, the name Zim Zum was derived from the Kabbalistic term Tzimtzum, a Hebrew word (צמצום) that means "contraction". It refers to an idea in Lurianic Kabbalah that God began the process of creation by contracting his infinite presence in order to create a vacant space where creation can take place.

Despite what is written in the album credits, Zim Zum did not participate in the recording of Irresponsible Hate Anthem, and is only credited on that song because it's supposedly a recording from the future.

B-Sides

Three original songs were released during the Antichrist Superstar era. These songs are Apple of Sodom, which made its debut on the soundtrack for David Lynch's movie Lost Highway (in which Manson and bassist Twiggy Ramirez had a short appearance), The Long Hard Road Out of Hell, which appeared on the soundtrack for Spawn, and also made into a single, and The Suck For Your Solution, an outtake from the Antichrist Superstar sessions that was released on the soundtrack for Howard Stern's film Private Parts.

Apple of Sodom

The Apple of Sodom is a fruit that grows in the biblical area of Sodom and Gomorrah (although it can also be found in a bunch of other areas across Asia and Africa). The plant it grows on is called Calotropis Procera, and the fruit it produces looks like a large and smooth apple, but instead of pulp it is filled with mostly air. In the center of the fruit is a small pod that runs through its core and contains a small quantity of fine silk. The sap of the fruit is toxic and extremely bitter. When the fruit is disturbed, it explodes in a puff, leaving only the silk pods and some remains from the shell.

This is a very hostile fruit that grew from the ashes of Sodom and Gomorrah, the legendary cities of sin that were destroyed by God. It represents the bitter, toxic, negative produce of that which is sinful, like a symbolic cautionary tale that out of sin only corrupt things can grow.

The song is about someone who made sacrifices to obtain stardom, and now in retrospect regrets the sacrifices and is bitter about them.

Samples

At the beginning of the song: "You'll never have me". Taken from the David Lynch movie Lost Highway.

The Long Hard Road Out of Hell

This song is the story of Manson breaking away from religion in search for a better life. It's the most optimistic song in the Antichrist Superstar era because it's approaching the story with a self-compassionate attitude, rather than the negative and hostile attitude of the album. When you feel like you're stuck in hell you can either choose to sink into it and make war with it, or you can choose to be inspired by a better life and try to break out of it. Antichrist Superstar was the first option, this song is the second one.

The song's title is a reference to John Milton's poem Paradise Lost, wherein Satan says: "long is the way and hard, that out of hell leads up to light".

The Suck for Your Solution

This song is about having repeated sexual interactions that are based on unhealthy motivations like wanting an ego boost, or soulless lust, rather than meaningful intimacy.

Music Videos

The Beautiful People

The video for The Beautiful People depicts a fascist society where the weak are subjugated and tortured, while the beautiful ones, who are represented by the tall figures, get to be beautiful because they stand on the shoulders of those who aren't.

Tourniquet

In the Tourniquet video, Manson is seen living in a filthy apartment, accompanied by twisted creatures made from pieces of his own body and other attachments. Eventually, some of his projects grow into the band members, and Manson undergoes a transformation to become one of them and join them. He and the members are then seen in space suits, in a much nicer apartment, floating around as if that apartment is in space.

This is roughly a retelling of Manson's rise to fame. He started at the bottom, created the band from his essence (as is the case with anything an artist creates), transformed himself, and lifted himself and the band to stardom, represented in the video by being astronauts living in space. The idea of representing Hollywood as space would later be a key metaphor in the follow up album Mechanical Animals.

Cryptorchid

The Cryptorchid video was done in the style of the movie Begotten, by the director of Begotten. It incorporates scenes from the movie itself, as well as some new footage shot for the music video.

The movie has a rather esoteric plot, however, given how disconnected the images are from the movie's narrative, I think that the intent was to reinterpret them for the Cryptorchid video, and thus diving into the plot shouldn't be necessary. Suffice to say that the music video follows similar themes to those of Begotten. In Begotten, the majority of the plot focuses on the naked, dirt covered man and a group of mysterious robed figures who kidnap and torment him, and this is mostly what we see in the music video too. In the movie, the naked man undergoes multiple cycles of death and rebirth, and there's a similar theme in the music video, because after the man is killed by the robed figures, the video ends with a shot of him rising again. Aside from these pointers, I don't think any more guidance needs to be provided. Like the original movie, this music video is designed to be an abstract experience, and really anything you see in it is fair game. With that said, here are a few additional tidbits:

The scene of Manson spilling his guts out, or rather- disemboweling himself- mirrors the beginning of Begotten, which opens with a scene of a man disemboweling himself. In the movie credits, this man is described as "God Killing Himself", which is essentially what we see playing out in the story of the album.

At the moment where the song switches into the "prick your finger" chant, which represents the moment when the Antichrist is born, we see this image:

The creature shown here is a water hydra. This ties in with the lyrics for the song Antichrist Superstar, which reprises the "prick your finger" lyric, and also contains the line "I am the hydra" in the chorus.

Man That You Fear

The music video for Man That You Fear is a retelling of Shirley Jackson's short story The Lottery. It's about a small town which observes an annual rite known as "the lottery", in which a member of the community is selected by chance. The shocking consequence of being selected in the lottery is revealed only at the end: whoever draws the winning slip, gets stoned to death by the rest of the town.

The story was originally published in the June 26, 1948, issue of The New Yorker, and was highly controversial. Many readers of The New Yorker cancelled their subscriptions in protest, and a lot of hate mail was received both by The New Yorker and Shirley Jackson herself.

The Man That You Fear music video follows the general plot of Jackson's story. A lottery is performed, Manson wins the lottery, and is stoned to death by the townsfolk. Unlike the original story, there's an entire segment between winning the lottery and claiming the reward that wasn't in the original story: Manson preparing for the event, and marching with the townsfolk to the location of the execution. These additions to the plot draw comparison to the story of Jesus Christ. There's the scene in which Manson's wife washes his feet, just like Mary Magdalene did to Jesus, and on his way to the stoning, Manson falls down, just as Jesus did on the way to the crucifixion.

One of the themes of Jackson's story is the folly of blind tradition. In the story, it is clear that the lotter is an incredibly old tradition; so old that some of its details and background have been forgotten, and its original equipment either missing or replaced. The rumors that some towns elected to cancel the lottery altogether bring exasperation to the town elder Old Man Warner, who is quick to warn that such foolishness will bring nothing but trouble, and point out that "there's always been a lottery". However, the details of why the lottery is important or beneficial are unclear from his speech, suggesting that there isn't really much reason to the practice aside from the idea that tradition for tradition's sake is what keeps society going. Put another way, the denizens of the town aren't doing the lottery out of evil, but for a tradition whose meaning they have long forgotten.

Similar undertones are also present in the Man That You Fear music video. When the town begins its march to the place of execution, we see a man in a wheelchair being pushed along by someone. Clearly, this is a town in which people take care of their sick and elderly. In another scene, there's a little girl that dons the head of a black horse. In the bible, a white horse represents death, and a black horse also represents death, but with the addition of evil and destructive characteristics. So, the fact that an innocent child is revealed in the end as the wearer of such a symbol of death and evil suggests that the townsfolks are oblivious to the nature of the symbol, which allows them to relegate it to a child's amusement.

Outside of the biblical context, horses have also been used as symbols for freedom, strength/virility, and war. This also happens to be a fitting set of descriptors for the United States, the powerful land of the free with a propensity to go to war, and fittingly the music video makes sure to display it alongside the American flag.

When Manson exits the trailer that he lives in, we can see a black flamingo on the left. This is a reference to the John Waters movie Pink Flamingos, in which the story's protagonist lives in a trailer decorated by pink flamingos.

Long Hard Road Out of Hell

Apple of Sodom

Antichrist Superstar

The Antichrist Superstar video was another music video created in collaboration with the director of Begotten, and it too recreates its famous monochromatic aesthetic. Like the Cryptorchid video, it contains some footage from Begotten, but this time it takes a back seat to the many clips of fascist rallies and military footage incorporated in the video. The idea was to mirror the fascist nature of the song itself, which represents a point in the story where the Antichrist arrives and imposes a new order on the world.

Manson wasn't entirely happy with the result, saying that he wasn't sure it did justice to the concept of the song, but even more appalled was the record label, which refused to release it. On June 19, 2010, the video was finally leaked to YouTube in its entirety.

The custom footage shot for the video includes Manson giving a speech on a podium with the Shock symbol. The podium is a common feature of the live performance of the song, where the stage is decorated in Antichrist Superstar flavored fascist themes, and Manson does the entire performance from a podium.

At one point in the video, Manson's face is juxtaposed with the image of a swarm of flies, creating the impression that they are covering his face. A similar image would later be used in the music video for the song Disposable Teens, off of the album Holy Wood.