Mechanical Animals

• Release date: September 14, 1998
• Genre: Glam rock
• Length: 62:38
• Label: Nothing, Interscope
• Written by: Marilyn Manson, Twiggy Ramirez, M.W. Gacy, Zim Zum

Track List

Introduction

The band's previous album, Antichrist Superstar, was their breakout album, propelling them into the American mainstream, and into international stardom. This kind of success bought Manson his ticket into Hollywood, and thus the follow up album became an exploration of his experience in the city of show business.

The album is divided into two points of view, each expressed through a different character, and every song on the album belongs to one of these characters. On one side we have Alpha, an emotional alien that lands on a planet of unfeeling mechanical animals and is a representation of Manson reconnecting with his emotions. On the other side we have Omega, a cynical, sarcastic, glam-rock parody of Hollywood, who represents Manson's commentary on celebrity and show business. The two are the polar opposites of one another: one is emotional, the other jaded, one is new to Hollywood, the other is fully integrated into it, one is how you start out before the world corrupts you, the other is how you end up once you give in to the corruption of show business. This relationship is reflected in the naming of the characters, which is a reference to the book of Revelation:

The two sides of the album are explained in further detail below:

Emotions: An alien in a land of mechanical animals

After the trying experience that was Antichrist Superstar and its tour, where most of his artistic experience was funneled into conflict, anger, and a great deal of physical pain, Manson came out of the era unburdened and invigorated. Some of this healing was brought about by the retrospective experience of writing his auto biography. The conclusion of this was that he was suddenly open to experiencing new emotions, positive ones like love and empathy, and yet he found Hollywood (and the rest of the world as well) to be utterly incompatible with his new sensitivity:

When Manson says that people are lacking emotions, he does not mean a literal inability to feel emotion, but rather a conscious decision on their part to numb and suppress their feelings. It's the way people opt for the emotional safety of bland, uncomplicated experiences, instead of the dangers of something unbridled like rock music. It's the way people turn to religion and various real or metaphorical drugs to medicate the tragedy of life. It's the way people don't express their creativity. Or, if we turn our head towards Hollywood, it's the way that environment encourages people to detach from their authentic self in order to become an ideal of glamour, and how that makes it impossible to have a connection with the real person behind the image.

Manson describes these emotionless people as mechanical animals, because being a robot means that you lack humanity, as well as the capacity to feel emotion. In contrast to that, he described his feeling-self as "Alpha", an androgynous alien who falls into Earth and now feels out of place in this environment:

I feel like... I've landed on a planet where I'm not from. And things are too over-intense for me, everything I touch, taste or see is overwhelming. Because I don't think I've really felt anything for five or six years.

Alpha's experience on this world is one of loneliness, detachment, and craving for love, as well as a lethargic kind of energy that according to Manson is a direct reflection of the atmosphere he observed in Hollywood:

Medical metaphors, and the color white

The numbness Alpha encounters in the world is often described using the color white, as well as an assortment of medical imagery. The medical imagery connects to the subjects of the album on multiple levels:

• It evokes the feeling of clinical sterility, which is a fitting metaphor for lack of emotion.
• It connects with the color white, a color that is used prominently in medical contexts.
• It brings forth references to drugs.
• It brings forth references to a coma.

Manson commented on these metaphor choices in an interview for the Los Angeles Times, saying:

Is there love in space?

With Manson's new life in Hollywood came a new Hollywoodian romance. Roughly in the middle of the Antichrist Superstar era, Manson began dating Rose McGowan, an actress who years later became the face of the #MeToo movement by accusing Harvey Weinstein. By Manson's own admission, his relationship with her was a key influence for him starting to write about love on the record, which he hardly ever did before:

Finding love really for the first time in such a state of desperation and ugliness that I was in at the time kind of set the tone for this record. I think love may have added a dimension or a perspective that normally wouldn't have been there... a part of me I normally wouldn't access, a level of empathy.

Rose was a classic example for a tragic Hollywood actress who got chewed up by the dark side of the city of glamor. You can read all about it in her autobiography Brave. "She's a very tortured person," Manson said about her in an interview for NME, "and that probably plays into a lot of the tragic love story elements that exist on the record".

Some of the love songs and snippets of love songs throughout the record speak of love in the face of the depressing and alienating atmosphere of the social dystopia Manson invented on the album, as if Manson is trying to work out if love is even possible in a world of mechanical creatures, while other songs stand out like a hopeful answer to this question, telling us bittersweet tragedies of love that's discovered in the last moment, reminding us that even when it seems impossible, it's never too late for love to happen.

Rose's traumatized persona inspired the character Coma White, which is the subject of the final song on the album, but also appears on the song Posthuman and hidden in the artwork.

Hollywood: an astronaut in space, and a cynical sellout

When Manson moved to Hollywood, he was living in a house perched on top of a hill. Surrounded by the darkness of the nighttime, he had the stars above him, and the city lights below him, creating the illusion of floating in space. Inspired by that scenery, space had become the album's metaphor for Hollywood: a cold, empty, and lifeless void, where all the (celebrity) stars are. Being a newcomer to this world, as Manson himself was, is represented by being an astronaut.

Although the astronaut songs appear on the Alpha side of the record, they don't seem to be from Alpha's point of view. Rather, the astronaut is his own character. Whereas Alpha is an alien that falls into Earth and ends up struggling to fit in, the astronaut is someone who escaped Earth in search for the glamour of Hollywood, only to discover that it's even deader than the world he left behind, and end up trapped there.

Most of the time when Manson is talking about Hollywood though, he is doing it through the eyes of a different character: Omega, the cynical, sarcastic glam-rock star who parodies Hollywood even as he fully participates in the show himself. These sections of the album are very much inspired by the glam rock of the 70s:

To me glam rock has always meant a very sarcastic and over-the-top flamboyant image that was hiding something that was darker and more depressing underneath. That was always the irony of glam rock to me. A lot of people never really looked beneath that.

David Bowie

Widely recognized as the king of glam rock, David Bowie is a major influence on this album. We can see this reflected in Manson's red-haired look and makeup for the era:

...but also in the adoption of androgyny and gender bending elements, just like David Bowie did during his Ziggy Stardust era.

Some of Bowie's projects touch on similar themes to Mechanical Animals:

Bowie's 5th album, The Rise And Fall of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars, tells the story of an androgynous and bisexual rock star who is sent to Earth to save it from an impending disaster. Though he succeeds in becoming a music icon, he lets his ego take over, causing him to lose his fans and band mates (The Spiders From Mars).

On Mechanical Animals, the androgynous alien Alpha eventually transforms into Omega, who embodies everything that's wrong with show business. Omega's band is called The Mechanical Animals.

One of Bowie's movies, The Man Who Fell To Earth, also deals with an alien who becomes corrupted by Earth society:

Based on a novle of the same name by Walter Tevis, The Man Who Fell To Earth tells the story of Thomas Jerome Newton, an alien sent to Earth to bring water back to his home planet, which is suffering from a catastrophic draught. His plan of becoming rich by introducing the advanced technology of his home planet to Earth goes according to plan, but in the meantime he becomes addicted to television and alcohol, and before he is able to execute his plans of sending water back home, he is kidnapped by his business rivals and the government, and held in captivity as they study his alien physique. After leaving his prison, he is left with nothing. Having no means to save his planet, nor go back to it, he becomes a musician, embedding secret messages in his songs to be received by people from his home planet.

The plot of this movie is used as a rough template for the music video for The Dope Show.

Song Analysis

Ω Untitled

When the CD is inserted into a computer, it launches a program that displays a two-picture gallery, and a song called Untitled is played as a background. The song is not listed in the track list, and it is not accessible when playing the song in a CD player, so it is not obvious where it should fit in the track chronology. However, this song does appear on some promotional versions of the album as the first song of the album, called "Intro", which gives a hint to its role in relationship to the rest of the tracks. This would suggest that listening to the album using a computer is the recommended way to experience the album, because then it would be the first song the listener would hear.

The picture gallery that accompanies the song features Manson's own watercolor paintings. One is a self-portrait from his "gray series", and the other one is called The Last Day On Earth, featuring two people looking at the ruins of a civilization. "That one was meant to be romantic”, Manson commented about the painting. "It was painted at the same time as I wrote the lyrics to a song by the same name. It was about holding hands with someone you love and watching the world end."

The song is a collage of all the metaphors that define the album, and a summary of the album's narrative concept, retold from the vantage point of the story's end, looking back. It is a bleak and desolate end, one in which society chose numbness and isolation over emotion and connection, and is now beyond fixing. In his mechanical voice, Omega tells us how he used to be a mechanical animal like everybody else, but then he reattached his emotions and became Alpha. However, he was unable to fit in, so in the end he gave in, and transformed back into a mechanical creature, becoming Omega.

The idea that a mechanical animal can become Alpha might sound contradictory given that Alpha the alien is supposedly not of this world, so he shouldn't be one of the mechanical animals, but remember that both Alpha and Omega are really symbolic representations of the same person: Marilyn Manson, so the concepts aren't supposed to be taken literally all the time. They're coherent if the way they describe Manson is coherent, and the sequence of events described above is roughly autobiographical:

In multiple interviews for the Mechanical Animals era, Manson said that during the Antichrist Superstar era, he didn't feel much of anything. In other words, he was mechanical. He started getting back his emotions towards the Mechanical Animals era, and that made him into someone like Alpha, an emotional being struggling to fit in in an emotionless world. But since fighting what the world has become is destined to failure, and staying as Alpha is not sustainable, giving in to the ways of the world is the only remaining course of action. Omega is what he expects to end up as.

Untitled belongs to the Omega side of the album.

α Great Big White World

This song introduces the main concepts of the album: space as a metaphor for Hollywood, the astronaut as a visitor to Hollywood, and the idea that we lost our emotions.

Great Big White World belongs to the Alpha side of the album.

Lyrics	Commentary
In space the stars are no nearer They just glitter like a morgue	This verse introduces the main metaphor for the album: Hollywood as outer space. As discussed in the introduction, Manson's impression of Hollywood was that it was devoid of any real emotion (because everything is impersonal, and everybody is faking their persona), so the concept of space- a cold, empty place where all the (celebrity) stars are- is an apt description for it. The stars glitter like a morgue because they are dead starts, and they're dead because they represent the emotionally "dead" celebrities. The imagery evokes the feeling of being in a vast empty void by telling us that space is so huge that even when you reach it, you're still no closer to the stars that inhabit it.
And I dreamed I was a spaceman Burned like a moth in a flame And our world was so fucking gone	A spaceman is a visitor in space. In other words, this is a metaphor for being a newcomer to Hollywood, much like Manson was at the time. He is dreaming of going to Hollywood in order to leave the emotionless Earth behind him. Burning like a moth in a flame is imagery that describes how his spaceship looks as it ascends from Earth: a small spot of flame up in the sky, like a tiny burning insect. Then the world is gone because he flew far away from it.
But I'm not attached to your world Nothing heals and nothing grows	Feelings of not fitting in (not attached to your world), and of how lifeless the world is (nothing heals, and nothing grows). It also works with the spaceman metaphor, since an astronaut is literally detached from the world he came from.
Cause it's a great big white world And we are drained of our colors We used to love ourselves, We used to love one another	More description of how devoid of emotion the world is. In interviews, Manson stated that the color white is used as a symbol for emptiness.
All my stitches itch My prescription's low I wish you were queen Just for today In a world so white what else could I say?	All my stitches itch My prescription's low Given the subject matter of the album, the stitches are probably an allusion to plastic surgery. They have become a nation of manufactured appearance and medicating away life with drugs. I wish you were queen Just for today In a world so white what else could I say? Being a queen is the height of female celebrity status, and in a world where personal love has been replaced with the impersonal admiration of celebrity, what else is there to wish for someone other than that they get their 15 minutes of fame (be queen just for today)? It's possible that the word choice for this segment was inspired by the David Bowie song Heroes, where the lyrics are: I, I will be king And you, you will be queen Though nothing will drive them away We can beat them just for one day
And hell was so cold All the vases are so broken And the roses tear our hands all open	Cold is another metaphor for lack of emotion. For our astronaut, being in this emotionless Earth was like living in hell, hence hell was cold. Roses are the flowers of romance, but also of pain, because they are thorny flowers. Therefore, they represent multiple emotions. Vases are containers for flowers, so they are containers of emotion, and the fact that they all shattered means that we lost our ability to contain emotion. Usually, when people numb themselves, it's not because of an excess of positive emotion, but rather to escape an excess of negative emotion. In this verse, the painful part of roses "killed us" by slitting our wrists, and now we're dead inside and can't feel anything.
Mother Mary miscarry But we pray just like insects And the world is so ugly now	Mother Mary is the mother of Jesus. Jesus was supposed to be the Messiah, but if you look around at the world we live in, it's clear that he wasn't able to save us. So, when Manson says she miscarried, he means that she was not able to birth the savior. Religion can't save us, and yet, we still engage in prayer, even though it's a lost cause. The "pray like insects" line is a reference to the praying mantis, an insect whose natural pose is with its hands clasped as if in prayer. Insects are often a metaphor for being small and insignificant, and indeed by the vast standard of outer space, we really are small and insignificant.
Cause it's a great big white world And we are drained of our colors We used to love ourselves, We used to love one another All my stitches itch My prescription's low, I wish you Were queen Just for today In a world so white what else could I say?

Ω The Dope Show

In this song, Manson compares fame to a drug high, and the facilitators of fame to the drugs themselves. A lot of the lines in the lyrics, when interpreted straightforwardly, just seem to be about drugs, but the metaphor becomes clear across multiple lines:

It's "the dope show" because it's the show of "the drugs" who control show business, and they want to get you high, and they hail from California, where Hollywood is. When you get hooked on these facilitators of fame, you'll be taken for a ride with the same ups and downs as real drug use.

The Dope Show belongs to the Omega side of the album.

α Mechanical Animals

To be mechanical is to be without emotion, and 'animals' is a reference to humans. Mechanical Animals; emotionless humans. Describing humans as 'animals' is a throwback to the philosophy of Anton Szandor LaVey, the founder of the Church of Satan. LaVey was a big inspiration for Manson, both on a personal and on an artistic level, as his work was one of the influences on the previous album Antichrist Superstar. One of the tenets of LaVey's Satanism is that man is just another animal, not necessarily better or worse than any of the other animals on Earth, a contrast to the Christian notion that humans have a divine status above that of the other animals.

The song describes Manson's alienation from the rest of society as the only being with emotion in a world that lost the ability to feel emotion: the isolation of not being able to have a connection with someone (I'll never be the one for you, they'll never be good to you or bad to you), the dissonance of loving a mechanical bride, and the tragedy that being an emotional creature surrounded by emotionless peers can lead to:

The song makes references to the activism of Raymond Kurtz, the father of a boy who shot himself while listening to Manson's previous record Antichrist Superstar. Raymond Kurtz reacted to the suicide by embarking on a crusade against the dangers of music as a way of blaming Manson for his son's suicide. In this song, Manson responds to Raymond by essentially saying: maybe I am a danger to teenagers, but you had a suicidal son living in the same house as you, and somehow you couldn't see that he was in pain?

Mechanical Animals belongs to the Alpha side of the album.

Lyrics	Commentary
We were neurophobic And perfect The day that we lost our souls Maybe we weren't so human But if we cry, we will rust	We were neurophobic Neurophobic = afraid to feel And perfect Perfect is not human. Ideals are perfect. Mannequins are perfect. Robots are perfect. Human beings are flawed. By wanting to be perfect, you make yourself less human, and indeed they aren't so human- they're mechanical. They can't even display emotion through crying for fear of ruining their perfection.
And I was a hand grenade That never stopped exploding You were automatic And as hollow as the 'o' in God	And I was a hand grenade That never stopped exploding This line is inspired by a statement from Raymond Kurtz, the father of the teenage boy who shot himself while listening to Manson's previous album Antichrist Superstar. In a testimony in Washington, Kurtz said that: I failed my son by not realizing that what he was holding [the Antichrist Superstar CD] was a hand grenade, and it was going to go off in his mind. You were automatic (…and hollow) This is a criticism that Manson levies towards Kurtz, saying "maybe I am a hand grenade, but you had a suicidal son living with you in the same house, and you were so mechanical (automatic) that you couldn't feel he was in pain". And as hollow as the 'o' in God This alludes to an idea that appears multiple times on this album that religion is also devoid of meaning. This line epitomizes this concept symbolically.
I am never gonna be the one for you I am never gonna save the world from you	The world of mechanical animals is a dystopia; a world of perfection that was attained by destroying what makes us human. He is the only one who can see it, hence his contemplating whether he can do something about it, turn it around somehow. However, there is such a strong detachment between him and everybody else that he can't even have a relationship with any of them (be someone for them), let alone help them out of the situation.
But they'll never be good to you or bad to you They'll never be anything, anything at all	This is what trying to have a relationship with the mechanical animals is like. Since they don't feel anything, they can only be neutral towards you.
You were my mechanical bride You were phenobarbidoll A manniqueen of depression With the face of a dead star	This verse describes love in a world obsessed with perfection. You were my mechanical bride This is a reference to The Mechanical Bride, a book by the media analyst Marshall McLuhan. The book is a collection of essays on pop culture, which also includes a chapter called The Mechanical Bride. In it, Marshall discusses the way advertisements detach sex from its personal and sensual aspects by focusing on the seductiveness of different parts of the body. The essay points out that this reduces sexuality to its mechanical aspects, and teaches men and women to view their sexuality in a tool-like manner (for example, female legs as entities of wielding power). You were phenobarbidoll Phenobarbidoll is a portmanteau of Phenobarbital, an anti-seizure medication, and Barbie Doll. A Barbie doll is another metaphor for something that has glamor and perfection but no humanity, because she's a non-living sculpture of a female ideal of beauty. She is also his sedative. A manniqueen of depression Manniqueen is another portmanteau: mannequin + queen. Also, if you say it out loud, it sounds like "manic queen". So, she's a model of depression/queen of depression/queen of manic-depression. The depression he speaks of is a pathology of the neurophobic, mechanical spirit that inhabits the body. Though Manson repeatedly describes society as "emotionless" on this album, the emotionlessness he speaks of is really social, not physical. The body still craves emotion and connection, and when deprived of that, depression ensues. With the face of a dead star Emotionally dead celebrity star.
And I was a hand grenade That never stopped exploding You were automatic and As hollow as the 'o' in God I am never gonna be the one for you I am never gonna save the world from you But they'll never be good to you Or bad to you They'll never be anything Anything at all
This isn't me I'm not mechanical I'm just a boy Playing the Suicide King	The suicide king is the nickname of the King of Hearts playing card. The nickname is based on the card design that looks like he is sticking a sword into his own head. Since heart is a metaphor for emotion, the suicide king is really king of emotion. This word choice is an interesting contrast with Raymond Kurtz's statement from before. For Raymond, Manson is literally a promoter of suicide, a king of suicide if you will, but Manson says that he is merely an emotional creature (not mechanical) putting forward emotion (playing the suicide king card). Alternatively, you can interpret this statement as coming from Kuntz's son, saying: "I'm not mechanical, I have all these emotions that I can't handle, and I'm playing the music of the suicide king because he is the king of emotion" (in other words, I'm playing his music to cope).

Ω Rock Is Dead

When asked about the song in an interview for Metal Edge magazine, Manson had this to say:

The song also talks about how society is raising its children and itself to favor safe mediocrity, religion, and medicating away emotions with drugs, and that makes them not receptive to truly rebellious music like rock. Their response is to be shocked and protest, instead of revel in it.

Rock Is Dead belongs to the Omega side of the album.

α Disassociative

Disassociative was inspired by an incidence in which Manson accidentally took Ketamine:

Within the context of the album, it's a moment of panic for our visitor-in-Hollywood astronaut-in-space who finds himself trapped in the void, on one hand disconnected from the planet of the mechanical animals that is Earth, and on the other hand floating in a place that is even deader than the world he left behind.

α The Speed of Pain

In an interview with ThePRP Manson said this was the song he was most proud of, and offered some background about how it was written:

This is a story of two lovers connected by pain. Though they had a painful and unsatisfying relationship, they could never let go of one another, and then, after going through catastrophic experiences, finally manage to find solace in one another as they "die" together. A lot of the verses in the lyrics could be viewed as coming from either side of the relationship, but there's enough directional language that I feel like it's more natural to view the whole song as coming from one person's perspective. However, there's certainly room to play with the perspective of the lyrics to fit your own preference.

The Speed of Pain belongs to the Alpha side of the album.

Ω Posthuman

This song talks about how celebrities are worshiped like religious figures, saying that this elevates them to a status that makes them something beyond mere humans- makes them posthumans. It discusses this phenomenon through the eyes of a woman who has such an obsession with celebrities, and who wants to become that ideal herself.

Posthuman appears on the Alpha side of the CD booklet. However, this is clearly an Omega song, so I'm categorizing it as such.

The song ends with a mechanical voice saying, "Ladies and gentlemen, Omega and the Mechanical Animals", which acts as a segue to the next song. This might be a subtle nod to David Bowie's album Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars, which features similar themes to Mechanical Animals, including the concept of an alien rock star (Ziggy) and his band (The Spiders From Mars).

Ω I Want To Disappear

This song is about two characters who are trying to run away from themselves (want themselves to disappear). One does it via attention seeking behavior, and the other via hedonism.

I Want To Disappear belongs to the Omega side of the album.

Samples

"Now children it's time for recess, please roll up your sleeves" from the film Brave New World, based on a book by the same name. It is a story set in a utopian society, exploring topics such as social engineering and hedonism, which ties in with the subject of the song in the second verse.

Ω I Don't Like The Drugs (But The Drugs Like Me)

In this song Manson makes fun of people who are dreadfully normal, people who are content with sitting in front of their TV and not being creative or not making their own opinion. They deal with being incredibly boring by using metaphorical drugs, religion, and talk show TV.

I Don't Like The Drugs belongs to the Omega side of the album.

Ω New Model No. 15

This song is about sexual objectification in the media, told through the perspective of someone who actively participates in it as the sexual object. This character describes itself as vacuous, dreadfully boring, vague, predictable, politically correct, got nothing inside, and treats her sexuality like it's the only valuable thing about herself. We don't know if that is really what this person is like, but in the song, they certainly treat themselves like that is what they are like, and you can view that as commentary on looks based industries- that to participate in them means treating yourself like you are nothing but a pretty face or a sexy body.

The name of the song is a word play on the double meaning of the word "model". A model is someone who sells their good looks, and often appears in magazines, but a model is also a design of a physical object. Both types are in a sense disposable. A beautiful model is a beautiful model is a beautiful model. If you lose one you just replace them with another, and the same goes with physical objects. This is expressed in the song title, which simply identifies these models by impersonal numbers.

The media angle of the song appears in the many references to magazines. Magazines often publish photoshoots of models, and also feature commercials for physical things. Some of the lyrics, primarily the chorus, are written like the sales pitch of a commercial for a new sex toy:

The new and improved sex toy version 15. Can suck and smile at the same time. Looks great at the home or the office. Lifelike and posable. Get yours today.

New Model No. 15 belongs to the Omega side of the album.

Ω User Friendly

This song is about how people in the hookup culture see their partners and themselves. In a strange turn of events, it's very straightforward lyrically, so I have nothing to analyze. The porn star Dyanna Lauren contributed orgasmic moans to the song.

User Friendly belongs to the Omega side of the album.

α Fundamentally Loathsome

This song is Alpha's lowest point, where he/she/it descends into spiteful hopelessness. The spite comes from the fact that he is forced to experience his pain alone, because the mechanical animals he lives with are emotionally unavailable. This leads him to contemplate giving up on his emotions and allow himself to become like them, so this might be the turning point on the way to becoming Omega.

Fundamentally Loathsome appears on the Omega side of the booklet. However, this is clearly an Alpha song, so I'm categorizing it as such.

α The Last Day On Earth

This is a romantic song about finding love in the last moment and spending the end of the world together. It's possible that this song was inspired by the movie Miracle Mile, which tells a similar story: a man falls in love with a woman, finds out the world is about to end, and is now on a race against time to find and save her.

At the end of the song, there's a reversed sample of Manson saying, "still not heard". It reminds me of something he had done on Antichrist Superstar:

In the song Tourniquet, Manson included a reversed sample of himself saying "this is my lowest point of vulnerability" to "create a distress call heard by no one but myself". Perhaps this is a continuation of that idea. His distress is still not heard.

The Last Day On Earth belongs to the Alpha side of the record.

α Coma White

Coma White was inspired by Manson's then-girlfriend Rose McGowan. In her autobiography Brave, Rose revealed some of the background for the lyrics:

Artwork

Booklet organization

The CD booklet is divided right in the middle into two sections: the Alpha section and the Omega section. Not only are these sections on two opposing sides of the booklet, but they are also printed upside down to one another, meaning that when you flip from one section to the other, you also need to turn the booklet upside down. The two sides also feature contrasting backgrounds: Alpha side is white (for the most part), while the Omega side is black. All of these contrasting elements are meant to emphasize that the Alpha and Omega characters are each other's opposites.

There's a weird yin-yang quality to the way the song lyrics are distributed between the two sections. For the most part, Omega song lyrics are on the Omega side, and Alpha song lyrics are on the Alpha side, but each side has one song that obviously belongs to the other side (Fundamentally Loathsome is on the Omega side, and Posthuman is on the Alpha side).

Alpha and Omega

The image of Alpha is meant to communicate vulnerability (expressed via nakedness), and alienation. In an interview for Alternate Press, Manson said that the puzzling nature of the image was in itself a statement on alienation:

I guess the image on the album cover was about the alienation. And having an image that is hard to understand was probably what I was trying to say. That people didn't understand was kind of what I was saying in the album.

...however, I also think that the androgyny of Alpha plays into the alienation part very well all on its own, because if you are neither male nor female, then not only are you unlike everybody else, you are also not compatible with anybody else.

There are multiple depictions of Omega, one of which has him wearing a golden shell, all glittering and mechanical, sitting on a huge pill. This costume was used on the cover of Rolling Stones magazine, where the circle in the middle of his chest was edited to display the background behind him, implying that he is hollow inside:

Although in the album, the golden suit doesn't have a hole, the idea of Omega's hollowness is still hinted at in another image in the booklet:

On this image, the pendant looks like a hole in his body, and rather than exposing flesh, it's just a dark void inside. The fact that it's part of a pendant suggests that he wears his emptiness like a decoration, a symbolic commentary on the depth of show business.

Medical Images

The album artwork has a prominent medical theme, filled with pills, medical equipment, and charts. Though they only serve as decoration that establishes the drugs and medical aesthetic of the era, I did some digging about them anyway. Here's what I was able to find out:

Despite what the first column says, this is not a chart that describes the stages of coma. Rather, this is a chart of Guedel's stages of anesthesia.

This is a patient's vital signs chart, tracking things such as fluid intake/outtake, temperature, blood pressure, pulse, and respiratory rate. The ASST and CONT markers of the chart are respiration markers, referring to assisted and controlled ventilation, a situation in which the patient's breathing is either assisted by a ventilator, or fully controlled by one. These markings are used to distinguish the respiratory readings from those in which the patient breathes on their own. This chart also tracks the dosage of chemicals (agents) that the patient receives.

The vital signs in the chart are consistent with those of a newborn. The patient receives oxygen supplements, laughing gas for sedation (N2O), and Dexamethasone Tylosin Colistine (DTC), a combination of steroids and antibiotics often used to treat respiratory infections. That, and the fact that this patient has a fever, suggests that the patient is suffering from respiratory difficulties due to an infection.

"Inflow Illusion" doesn't appear to be an established term. It appears to be written on a sticker that was taped on the chart, and this sticker is covering pulse readings that happen to shoot way up, so my guess is that there was an error in the monitoring of the pulse, and the sticker was put there to clarify that these particular data points are not valid readings.

The image on the left is a closeup of a Pyrex pipette (catalog), specifically this model:

The image on the left appears to be a closeup of a tube that belongs to an old Clay-Adams apparatus. Clay-Adams was a manufacturer and importer of laboratory, surgical, and medical supplies, and you can still find some of their equipment in auctions and collections of vintage medical equipment. To the right we can see an example of a vintage micro sedimentation apparatus with an Adams USA writing on the tube.

The number 15

If you follow Manson's work long enough, you'll inevitably encounter the number 15 at some point. You may notice it as the name of the final song on the album The High End of Low, or as one of Manson's many tattoos, or sneakily hidden in artwork (like how Manson's pointy halo in The Pale Emperor artwork consists of 15 edges), or in one of Manson's Facebook posts, receiving an enthusiastic approval from fans:

But bar none, the place where you'll see this number pop up the most, is in the Mechanical Animals era, which started the number 15 craze by featuring it so prominently in the artwork.

Since then, the mythology around the number grew as fans tried to find interpretations for it. Theories ranged from biblical references, to occult references, to being a reference to Manson's birthday (January 5th), to being a reference to the Tarot and astrology, and many other ideas. Whether any of this was intended, or embraced by Manson in response to the fans getting so caught up in the fantasy around the number, the number 15 has become a number that Manson identifies with, and continues to hint at in his work ever since.

Hidden messages

The album comes with a blue tinted jewel case, and one of the pages of the booklet has this graphic:

This is a hint for the user to view the booklet through the tinted case. Various pages of the booklet feature yellow text printed over blue graphics, and over a white background. The text is unintelligible under normal conditions due to the really poor contrast between the yellow and the white, and the blue graphic adding a lot of visual noise, but when viewed via the blue tinted jewel case, the blue disappears, and the yellow becomes green, and the messages reveal themselves.

The decoded messages are:

• Near the lyrics for The Speed of Pain: A blue message 'SPEED OF PAIN' transforms to 'FREED OF PAIN' when viewed via the jewel case.
• WWW.COMAWHITE.COM.
  This was a rather confusing website that featured additional graphics in the style of what appeared in the booklet.
• I NO LONGER KNEW IF COMAWHITE WAS REAL OR JUST A SIDE EFFECT.
• A SUN WITH NO PLANETS burning in circles.
• NOW CHILDREN IT'S TIME FOR RECESS, ROLL UP YOUR SLEEVES.
  This is a phrase from the movie Brave New World, which appears as a sample in the song I Want To Disappear.
• The lyrics to the hidden song Untitled.
• EVEN MACHINES CAN SEE THAT WE ARE DEAD.

Beyond The Record

The Mechanical Animals era yielded 3 singles, 5 music videos, 1 secret website, a tour documentary VHS tape, and a live CD. The live CD includes 2 original B-sides: Inauguration of The Mechanical Christ, which is used as an intro to the live show, and Astonishing Panorama of The End Times, a song originally written for Antichrist Superstar.

During this era, Manson also dipped his feet into the business side of showbusiness, launching his own vanity label called Posthuman Records, a subsidiary of Priority Records. It was a short-lived label which only ever signed one band (Godhead) and only released two albums, Godhead's 2000 Years of Human Error, and the soundtrack for Blair Witch 2.

When discussing the label in an interview for Outburn, Manson said:

Singles

The singles feature some of Manson's watercolor paintings as artwork. The Dope Show single features a self-portrait from his "grey series", while I Don't Like The Drugs has a painting by the same name. A detail that is a bit cropped out from the I Don't Like The Drugs painting is that the decapitated creature is holding his own brain.

New stage name

During the album's writing/recording sessions, the band's guitar player Zim Zum was fired. The reports on the matter are somewhat contradictory, with Manson claiming he was fired for not attending band practice and other unreliable behavior, while Zim Zum claims he wanted to pursue other opportunities. Regardless for the reason, he was replaced with John Lowery, who worked primarily as a session musician and had a very solid reputation for being professional and dependable. Like Zim Zum before him, he received a stage name that had a different format from the band members that came before him, this time in the theme of the Mechanical Animals era: John 5.

In an interview, Manson explained that:

He's just simply John 5 because he's the fifth person that we've hired. In the future, everyone will have numbers instead of names.

Some believe the name also has a biblical meaning, since it reads like a reference to the 5th chapter of the gospel of John, but I see no indication of that being the case.

John 5 was the last member of the band to be given a stage name. All new members since used their real names.

B-Sides

Inauguration of The Mechanical Christ

This track can be heard on the live CD Last Tour On Earth. It was used as an introduction to the live show, played as Manson rose to the stage on a crucifix made of TVs.

Astonishing Panorama of The End Times

On April 20th, 1999, two 12th grade students of Columbine High School showed up at the school armed to the teeth with multiple firearms and improvised explosives, intending to kill as many people as they could. With 13 dead and 24 wounded, it was the worst school shooting in the history of the United States at the time. In the moral panic that ensued, the media propagated the rumor that the teenagers were fans of Marilyn Manson, and even though that was later disproved, the media continued to run sensationalist stories casting blame on the band, and in particular its front man himself. As a result of this scandal, the follow up album to Mechanical Animals- Holy Wood- became Manson's response to the unfair blame he received, dealing with topics such as United States' gun culture, the role of the media in promoting martyrdom, and the psychology of how hopeless teens can be driven to such actions.

Astonishing Panorama of The End Times was released roughly 7 months since the shooting, and so its lyrics have more in common with Holy Wood than Mechanical Animals.

Music Videos

The Dope Show

The Dope Show music video roughly follows the plot of the movie The Man Who Fell To Earth. Manson plays an alien, the androgynous Alpha, who lands on Earth, is captured and experimented on, and then transformed into a product of the show business.

The opening scene where Manson is wandering around the hills of Simi Valley, California, in a somewhat unstable manner, is mirroring the opening scenes of The Man Who Fell To Earth, where the show's alien protagonist, who just landed on Earth, is struggling to walk down a hill.

This shot is a recreation of the sculpture Overflowing Blood Machine, by German visual artist Rebecca Horn. Horn had this to say about the piece:

Another sculpture of Horn makes an appearance in the car scene. This piece is called Cornucopia, Séance For Two Breasts. Cornucopia means "horn of plenty", and it's a symbol of abundance and nourishment, so the sculpture seems to be about self-nourishment. However, it also prevents the wearer from speaking, and in the context of the music video that's important, because presumably Alpha wasn't the one who chose to wear this to the meeting. He is now a product of show business which the agent is trying to sell to other people, so the outfit was probably chosen by the publicist, not by him, and like a model whose job is to have nice boobs and not speak, he was given a breast outfit that prevents him from speaking.

The magazines that the agent is showing Alpha are SPUN, a wordplay on the real magazine SPIN, and The National Interrogator, a wordplay on the real magazine The National Enquirer.

The scene of Alpha destroying a room full of statues of itself is a homage to Alejandro Jodorowsky film The Holy Mountain, in which a Jesus looking dude finds a room full of statues that look like him, and breaks them all in a fit of rage. This is Alpha's protest for having been turned into a product.

This is Goddess Bunny, a drag queen icon famous for celebrating her deformities.

Rock Is Dead

This is just a performance video. However, since the song was part of The Matrix promotional material, there is a version of the video where scenes from The Matrix are interspersed in the video.

I Don't Like The Drugs (But The Drugs Like Me)

This music video is a surrealistic, symbolic story in the style of Alejandro Jodorowsky's The Holy Mountain, that takes place in the dystopian society that Manson envisioned for Mechanical Animals. Humans have become a race of wide-eyed, mouth gaping idiots, fed an education of religion, dope, sex, and talk show TV. This is depicted by the family that appears throughout the video: they have a nativity scene in their back yard (are religious), the mother is teaching the kids using cue cards with words such as "drugs", "masturbate", "repent", "dope star", "suicide", "qualudes" (a misspelling of Quaalude, a brand of sedative medication), and they watch talk show TV together. The desolate looking environment accentuates the dystopian nature of this world. A sign that reads END also hints at the concept that this is how the world ends.

We then see Manson depicted as the Mechanical Christ, a role that is represented by a few things:

First of all, he is crucified on a cross made from TVs. Second, his appearance resembles that of Jesus Christ when he appeared to John in the book of Revelation:

As a final hint, during the Mechanical Animals era, it was standard for Manson to begin his live shows by rising to the stage on a cross made of TVs. The instrumental intro that accompanied the stage entrance was called Inauguration of The Mechanical Christ.

The TV crucifix was inspired by a deleted scene from the Alejandro Jodorowsky film The Holy Mountain, which Manson also referenced in the music video for The Dope Show, and also in future projects such as the Born Villain film.

Manson is chased by headless figures that appear to be some sort of police-like officers, wielding police batons and dressed in uniform. The identity of these troopers is not entirely clear, however, there is a quick shot around the 0:08 mark of an insignia known as the Great Seal of The United States, sewn unto black fabric. This seal can be found on the US army officer cap, so perhaps this is the local government trying to silence him.

This would fit with the idea of him being a mechanical Christ, because Jesus faced a lot of apposition from the religious Jewish leaders of his time, who were effectively the ruling power of the Jews in the old world due to the authority their status commanded.

Manson escapes the officers and runs into a clinic that specializes in amputations. You can tell that amputations is all they do by the pictures that hang on the walls, all showing a doctor performing an amputation. There is a verse in the bible about amputation as a way of ridding yourself of sin:

...so perhaps in this dystopian world, fed on Christianity, this is what medicine has degenerated into.

While in the waiting room we see the rest of the band members as patients. The bassist Twiggy Ramirez has his legs amputated, while guitarist John 5 is holding his crotch area. This is a hidden joke about him being a "sex addict", or as Manson puts it on the tour documentary God Is In The T.V.: "John talks to any girl who has tits". The other two members don't seem to have anything amputated, but they both have dogs, so perhaps the dogs are there to distract them while they await their operation. While in the waiting room, Manson appears to be malfunctioning, with his head twitching and the left hand seems to have a will of its own. Manson's doctor flips through his notebook to see that the wound from the crucifixion is rotting his hand, so an amputation is in order.

After the amputation Manson stumbles into the same talk show that the family in the video is watching. Notice that just like the officers who chased him, the talk show host is also headless, suggesting a commonality with the officers. My interpretation is that the headless figures in the video are headless because they are personified roles, as opposed to people. An officer is an officer is an officer, it doesn't matter who happens to occupy the uniform. Similarly, a talk show host is a role, that has been played by multiple people, sometimes even in the same show if it's been running long enough. Also notice the cross shaped background in the talk show. This symmetric flavor of the cross resembles the medical cross, possibly a commentary on talk shows being a form of moral group therapy for the masses.

At the end of the music video, Manson is cornered by the officers, and commits suicide. We then see his body inside of the TV crucifix, suggesting that his death has been televised to the applauding audience. The significance of dying on TV is a topic that Manson started exploring on this era (in relationship to the televised assassination of JFK), and will continue to be a dominant concept in the follow up album Holy Wood, with songs like Lamb of God, where he says:

Coma White

The Coma White music video recreates the famous Zapruder film, which shows JFK's assassination. Manson plays JFK, and his then girlfriend Rose McGowan (who was also the inspiration for the lyrics) plays Jackie Onassis. The music video draws comparison between JFK and Christ, and between Jackie Onassis and Mary. In an interview Manson explained the comparison as follows:

Besides JFK and Jackie Onassis, there are a few supporting characters that flesh out the concept. One of them is a strange looking tall man who represents death:

We can infer that he represents death because he seems to have a relationship with both JFK and Jackie Onassis (JFK because he died, Jackie Onassis because she was as close as anyone could possibly be to his death when it happened). Also, when Manson-as-JFK rises from death, just like Jesus did, he gets up from lying in his lap.

There is also a woman who resembles Rose Kennedy, JFK's mother:

At the scene of his crucifixion, he is accompanied by death, Mary the prostitute, and one of the faceless figures that appear all over the Mechanical Animals music videos, possibly representing the faceless masses. Also present is an old man, who I think might represent the elders who were present at the crucifixion of Jesus:

So also the chief priests, with the scribes and elders, mocked him, saying, "He saved others; he cannot save himself".

There is also a hat wearing man with a thin mustache, dressed in black. He has all the features of the stereotypical Snidely Whiplash style villain:

I believe that this is a reference to the conspiracy theories about who really killed JFK. Right now, Lee Harvey Oswald, who was implicated in the murder, should be on the run trying to get away from the scene, yet when we look for the villain character, he is not at Elm street trying to board a bus, but right here, among the people, next to crucified Kennedy. The real villain is hiding in plain sight at the scene of the crime while the police is out there looking for someone matching Oswald's description.

Speaking of boarding a bus, in the scene where Jackie Onassis is grieving over her dead husband, you can see a bus passing by behind her, which if intentional, is a cool attention to detail.

The procession in honor of Kennedy resembles the Dia de Los Muertos (Day of The Dead) celebration. This is a mexican holiday in which the lives of the deceased are celebrated. Its customs include skull makeup, decorating graves with flowers (in the music video the flowers are on crosses and around JFK's picture instead), a celebratory procession, and more. As an added reference to the Mexican tradition, the depiction of Saint Mary in the video uses the "Virgin of Guadalupe" version from the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City.

Astonishing Panorama of The End Times

This music video was produced by the MTV show Celebrity Deathmatch, a claymation show that depicts wrestling matches between various celebrities (Manson appeared on the show in a fight against Ricky Martin, and in another episode fighting Charles Manson). It is mostly a performance video, but it has a few of Manson's artistic touches, specifically a spider-TV monster that hypnotizes people, and conjoined twin monkeys.

In the music video, the conjoined monkeys are contrasted with Manson, who at some point is depicted as Leonardo DaVinci's Vitruvian Man:

The Vitruvian Man is a drawing that depicts DaVinci's conception of ideal body proportions, inspired by the work of ancient Roman architect Vitruvius. It is one of DaVinci's most famous drawings due to its synthesis of artistic and scientific ideals (the concept of what is a perfect body proportion is an artistic concept, while the execution of the depiction is informed by geometry and measurements).

The drawing is considered an archetypal representation of High Renaissance, and through that the Renaissance era as a whole. The Renaissance was a period in European civilization that was characterized by the resurgence Classical scholarship. The ideal of the Renaissance Man was someone limitless in his capacity for development, and striving to live up to that potential. DaVinci himself was an example for such a man, being accomplished in diverse fields such as art, science, music, invention, and writing.

These ideals of perfection, artistic and scholarly development, expressed in Manson's depiction as the Vitruvian Man, are then contrasted with the conjoined monkeys, the less evolved versions of humanity who are content with watching TV all day, and having no thoughts of their own. I think that the monkeys are conjoined because they represent society as a whole, saying that they are all the same: we technically have multiple monkeys, but they're really the same single organism.

Manson appears to the monkeys like a revelation. His stance is similar to the way Saint Mary is often depicted, with her outstretched hands and radiant appearance. This depiction of Mary is based on an apparition of Mary that occurred in 19th century France and inspired the design of the Miraculous Medal.

The monkeys are watching TV from the same spider-TV monster that can be seen brainwashing the people in the crowd. At first, the monkeys are chasing after the TV, but once it shows them Manson, the evolved Renaissance man, they run away from it.

Tour

There were effectively 2 tours in the Mechanical Animals era. The first was simply called Mechanical Animals, while the second started as a combined tour with the band Hole, called Beautiful Monsters tour, but Hole quickly dropped out, and the band continued without them, renaming the tour to Rock Is Dead.

The Mechanical Animals themed additions to the show included Manson rising to the stage on a cross made of TVs, a huge neon sign spelling DRUGS, and a speech about drugs that introduced the song I Don't Like The Drugs. An example of that speech is included in the live album Last Tour On Earth.