Inside “We Are Chaos,” the new song & album by Marilyn Manson, Part 1

Collaborating with Shooter Jennings, Manson has created a modern masterpiece, the perfect song and album for this American moment

This is Part One of our three part series on Manson, Shooter and Chaos.

Today, on this dark 19th anniversary of 9-11, comes Marilyn Manson’s newest album We Are Chaos, a powerful, passionate song cycle. A collaboration with Shooter Jennings, who produced and co-wrote the songs, it is a masterpiece, and his greatest, and most disturbing album. As in past songs, he sings of his own demons, disquiet and dysfunction. Yet more than ever he is a broken mirror, darkly reflecting the disquiet and dysfunction of our world. It shows the breadth of his artistry for channeling the collective chaos of these modern times.

American Songwriter spoke to both Manson and Jennings about their remarkable collaboration. We will bring you those full interviews in the coming days. But first this, an introduction and celebration of the album and the two artists who created it. Though it is maybe his darkest album, reflecting this darkest era of death and unrest, both he and Shooter were quite bright and happy speaking about creating this album together.

As his fans and others know, Manson is not the unhinged, demonic ghoul fueled by absinthe, as his legend leads one to believe. If he was, he would have self-destructed years ago. That he is not only alive, but at the height of his powers, when so many who ascended with him are long gone, tells the truth.

Anyone who saw his appearance in Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine learned long ago of his deeply thoughtful eloquence. That came across in our interview in his gentle, humble and pensive answers.

The title song, with a haunting video made by the great Matt Mahurin (famous for his dreamlike photos of Tom Waits) was released on July 29, as we wrote that day.

It was remarkable then for its reflection of this sorrowful, fearful season of chaos and even more so now as the death and despair has become more severe. Its chorus is among the most visceral, primal expressions of inner turmoil since the unchained desperation of Kurt Cobain’s “Here we are now, entertain us/ I feel stupid and contagious” chorus of “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”

Manson’s lyric, not unlike Cobain’s, shows us a world in which reason, logic and hope have been abandoned and lost. It is a masterpiece of songwriting, using words to describe that which is beyond words.

The album is officially being released today, on the dark American anniversary of 9-11, now 19 years since those towers fell. Though created prior to this season of perpetual chaos, with its attendant lockdown, isolation, fear, misinformation, violence, death, illness, unemployment and unrest, it fits the now of now perfectly.

In our talk he said the words of “We Are Chaos” were about his own interior, personal chaos. Yet still he acknowledged that, as Shooter suggested, he could sense what was to come while writing the words.

“Shooter said that maybe it was a sort of feeling I had. I think I was speaking in one part more about my own mental health, and problems relating to other people. But there have been so many different versions of terrible situations in life, whether it be losing family members or going back as far as having to face fighting for my ability to be a songwriter, when we go back to Columbine.”

“Because after you write songs a while, you start to see all the pieces come together in a way that you didn’t before; you realize that your unconscious mind has had them there all along, and they just fell into place properly.”

WE ARE CHAOS
By Marilyn Manson & Shooter Jennings

If you say that we’re ill
Give us your pill
Hope we’ll just go away
But once you’ve inhaled death
Everything else is perfume

Maybe I’m just a mystery
I could end up your misery
Maybe I’m just a mystery
I could end up your misery

In the end we all end up in a garbage dump
But I’ll be the one that’s holding your hand

We are sick, fucked up and complicated
We are chaos, we can’t be cured
We are sick, fucked up and complicated
We are chaos, we can’t be cured

Maybe I’m just a mystery
So far, so far from the maddening crowd

We are sick, fucked up and complicated
We are chaos, we can’t be cured
We are sick, fucked up and complicated
We are chaos, we can’t be cured

Am I a man or a show, or moment
The man in the moon
Or a man of all seasons
Will I be in at the kill
With you?

We are sick, fucked up and complicated
We are chaos, we can’t be cured
We are sick, fucked up and complicated
We are chaos, we can’t be cured
We are sick, fucked up and complicated
We are chaos, we can’t be cured
We are sick, fucked up and complicated
We are chaos, we can’t be cured