SLAYER/MARILYN
MANSON
PNC BANK ARTS CENTER
HOLMDEL, NJ
by Christine Natanael/photos by Linda
Aversa
LINKS:
The co-headlining tour of Slayer and Marilyn Manson was one that was hotly anticipated in the NY/NJ area for most of the summer. Just as the music of the two groups is vastly different and often socially derided, so too were the fans in attendance. There was pretty much no mistaking who came to see which band from the mode of dress and the indiscriminate shouts of “Slay-er!” starting at the train station, following on to the venue on the shuttle bus…which unfortunately took so long and was so unpredictable, that I entirely missed the set of Orange County metalcore favorites Bleeding Through, (sorry guys, but they don’t let the epileptic one drive…!), which sucked for me, as I really like them a lot.
Foregoing the usual black stage curtain, Slayer instead chose to use a huge white sheeting during their intro, upon which they projected a plethora of huge, swirling, white pentagrams and Slayer logos, jacking up the already amped-up crowd more and more with each passing moment. Without warning there came cracking-loud super-explosions, and the sheeting dropped down in front of the band, who slammed straightaway into “Flesh Storm” from their Grammy-winning 2006 album Christ Illusion, while strobe lights seared the retinas and crew members scrambled furiously to get that unwieldly sheeting off the short stage apron. Not that the crowd noticed much of the technicalities at all, as they were entirely too busy losing their minds.
Still, the Slayer set that evening had a very strong, cohesive message and presentation from beginning to end, making a band already known for its sheer brutality and power absolutely on-point, and after years of being disdained, blissfully poignant. From “Flesh Storm” the guys continued on the theme with “War Zone” from their 2001 album God Hates Us All, the classic “Chemical Warfare” from ‘84s Haunting the Chapel, “Ghosts of War” from ‘88s South of Heaven and then brought it all back into perspective with “Jihad” and “Cult”, both from Christ Illusion.
While the bombastic diatribe rumbled, vibrating every inch of concrete in PNC Bank Art Center’s outdoor performance area, the stage was swathed in a simulation of war—strobes, cracking explosions, and small pyro all served to fill in the blitz and fire and acrid smoke of the battlefield, while looming behind were changing back-screened projections of visceral art based on the themes of the covers painted for the band by long-time album cover artist/collaborator Larry Carroll, which illustrated the lyrics.
And beside the pummeling fury, it was all about the lyrics and the message that night. From there, Araya continued with his stating of the obvious with “Disciple” from God Hates Us All, the one rarity of the evening, “Bitter Peace” from ‘98s Diabolus In Musica, and then “Payback”, also from GHUA.
Kerry King and Jeff Hanneman were each stalking their appointed territories of stage and giving it to the crowd like the seasoned vets they are. Dave Lombardo laid down his monstrous double thunder and Araya put his thick bass layer right on top of it, causing the entire venue to rumble like an earthquake, right through the souls of my boots, shaking my bones and churning my guts.
As if their set hadn’t been heavy enough in power or meaning up until that point, that was when they pulled out the obligatory crowd favorites: “South of Heaven”, “Raining Blood”, “Hell Awaits”, and “Mandatory Suicide” before giving the big finale on the one and the only “Angel of Death”, sending the whipped up crowd into a rabid frenzy.
As the curtain closed, the familiar chants of “SLAY-ER! SLAY-ER! SLAY-ER!” could be heard trailing to the parking lot as nearly half of the crowd made its way out of the venue. By dress and attitude, like I mentioned before, you could definitely tell who came to see who at this show, as slowly the crowd changed from the big burly, rowdy long-haired stoner types and overly-muscled jock types of Slayer fans to the super-pale, more effete, uber-goth crowd. (I just hope it wasn’t like a repeat of high school out in the parking lot with the Slayer rowdies beating up on the timid Manson goths…eeewww, did I say that?)
After the pugilistic display that was Slayer, the Marilyn Manson set seemed like a really nice lullaby or fairytale bedtime story, all sweet and pretty. And although there were some hearts (possibly of the broken variety) on display, there definitely wasn’t a rainbow or My Little Pony in sight… Yes, he was here to sing away those horrific visions of war from before my eyes and replace them with lush lulling misanthropic visions of romance, sex, and social ills. Gotta love the boy for that.
Beginning with a beautiful classical piano and cello intro with the stage bathed in red light, it’s suddenly interrupted by the pounding of a heart...
As Manson began the lyrics
to his first single “If I Was Your Vampire” off the new album
Eat Me, Drink Me, the MM embossed black sheeting dropped to reveal
a fog-covered stage, the middle of which slowly gave up the silhouette
of the singer rising from its bowels. The crowd, rabid with its devotion
for him, clamored closer, climbing over the designated seating and blatantly
ignoring security, crushed closer in their enthusiasm. This ride had just
begun and Manson was firmly in control as he headed straight into “Disposable
Teens” from 2000’s Holy Wood album, grabbing the
crowd by the warm and fuzzies and getting them all chanting right along
before dragging them headlong into “mOBSCENE” from ‘03s
Golden Age of Grotesque.
Unlike the highly stylized tour for that release, this night’s show had a sparseness to the stage presentations, with Manson spending most of the time crouching right up into the fans in the front rows, bathing them in his sweat, their faces coming perilously close to the point of the butcher knife attached to the base of his microphone.
Just as they thought they were going to get a great piece of their idol, he retreated and the stage was plunged into darkness. Moments later a bit of taped intro from the Disney version of Alice in Wonderland came across the PA, albeit, entirely garbled and distorted (as was most of the sound for both bands that evening due to the acoustics under the concrete of this particular outdoor shed’s construction). When the lights came back up, Manson was atop a HUGE chair, his main wingman, Tim Skold, on guitar and drummer, Ginger Fish, over to his right, bassist Rob Holliday and Chris Vrenna, covering the keyboards, to his left. The boys proceeded to lay down the sex and groove and Manson belted out “Are You The Rabbit?” with vim and vitriol and attendant acrobatics atop the chair as well. And when the song had ended, we were plunged into darkness once more and treated to another Alice audio clip (which I would have enjoyed more, with my enormous fetish for all things Alice, had it not sounded so much like the teacher in the Charlie Brown cartoons—“wah-wah-wah-wah-wah-wah”) while the chair was again removed.
On a still darkened stage,
Manson returned wearing his prop flashlight goggles to deliver the opening
strains of the medley of “Sweetdreams (Are Made of This)”
from ‘95s Smells Like Children and “Lunchbox”
from ‘94s Portrait of an American Family. These were the
only two classics from his earliest period that he performed that night,
but the crowd screamed every lyric like a litany. Next up were two from
the new disc, starting with a screaming siren intro to “Just a Car
Crash Away” with images of towering flames licking up the back projection
screen as fog juice belched across the stage for emphasis and punctuation
to this melancholic, wailing, droning dirge. But all could not and would
not stay dark for long as electric blue lights bathed the stage and it
started to rain big beautiful heart-shaped confetti down upon the adoring
masses, getting the energy once more up and running after the “car
crash”, and just in time, too, as the venue erupted into a smiling,
dancing eroto-love-mass for Manson.
The newer material, while not as socially, politically, or religiously motivated and angry, and as such, mistakenly might lead some to think Manson has softened his edges or stances, actually signals a refocusing, tempered with that which only experience, combined with intellect and maturity can bring. It is a nice view indeed, although, I don’t think fully realized in the time slot and manner allowed on such a tour as this.
Truthfully, for a visual performer, who has used the medium of video so well to his advantage, even for all the tricks, bells and whistles that he did throw out there in this performance, to still be doing a standard live show is rather disappointing and anti-climactic. He gives hints of great potential for an amazingly theatric stage show from all periods of his career, but short of mounting something on the scale of what Madonna does (yeah, okay, don’t laugh, the girl does plan that shit out) or doing it in one spot like Vegas, it’s probably too cost-prohibitive. And that’s a real sad state of affairs when it comes to rock music and art in America, to see someone who you know has so much to say and so much potential and is limited by the parameters of what’s currently available in the touring industry.
All in all, the combined co-headlining
tour of Slayer/Manson was an interesting mix, but I think Slayer’s
set seemed a bit more cohesive than Manson’s in delivery when the
two were place side by side simply because it was not as ambitious in
its scope or theatricality and more easily delivered as a straightahead
rock show in an outdoor shed venue. That's not to take anything away from
Manson or to exhalt Slayer--they are both veterans, and as such, both
have my utmost respect.
