Review Summary: He knows where you live?
I think it’s fair to say that the thing that quantifies Marilyn Manson most in this world is rage. What he brought to the youths, before anything else was rage. A whole wheelbarrow of rage. Cans of Pringles filled with rage. Butter melting on toasted rage for breakfast. More rage than Rage Against The Machine brought as they raged against the Machine in Florence +The Machine. It was hard to imagine back then, amid all the rage, that the man behind the rage was someone whose mom probably called him Bri-Bri, and she would go in his room and pick up his dirty drawers to throw them in the wash, and he would stomp through the house screaming “Moooooom! I wasn’t done with those yet!!,” as his granny knitted him a woolly hat with a Pentagram on it.
The big question of course is, does Heaven Upside Down have rage? And yes, yes it does. But it’s a different sort of rage. It’s the sort of middle-aged rage that’s far less ragey and far more detrimental to the psyche. Because on a long enough timeline, even your rage becomes something of a daily chore, a thing you have to do, quotidian pain in the ass rage, another ***ing errand. So it becomes a docile rage, the kind of rage you save for parking tickets, pigeons shitting on your shoulder, the Green Party, buses running late, one-legged marathon runners who make you feel like a lazy prick, both the homeless and poverty in equal measure, bad mobile reception, broken shoelaces, income tax rates and morons whose gluten allergies are their main thing. All of which makes Heaven Upside Down Bri-Bri’s most relatable album in years. Rage for the middle-aged. I’d like to rage at you right now, but my knees are a bit drafty so I might do it sitting down if you don’t mind. The only thing that’s aggravated more than my rage right now are my hemorrhoids. I like to rage while making lemon tea with sage. Rage in beige, and other such dinkymajinx.
In a way, Bri-Bri really does capture the inspirations for this nom de guerre, both Marilyn Monroe and Charles Manson. Because leaving aside some put-upon pretensions of personal liberty, fringe social commentary or lipsticked prophesizing, what his persona was this whole time was a grotesque display of vanity, something he made increasingly obvious around 1999, by actually looking like a doomsday preacher with tits.
In conclusion, I hope the next thing Bri-Bri turns Upside Down isn’t Heaven, but that frown. Cheer up, old pal, I think Target is having a sale on pleather trousers next week. All is not lost.
PS, you look like a cunt.
