The HARD 10 are ten of the most graphic albums ever released that all left an indelible mark upon the listener and the industry as a whole. Do enjoy these tales and songs, and carry their power into your life, finding their unrepentant aggression to be as emotionally valuable as tears.
Mix a potent combination of overtly religious imagery with heaping spoonfuls of glam, serial killers, dark industrial production and lyrics that advocate violence, Marilyn Manson’s 1996 Antichrist Superstar is easily one of the hardest, most controversial and legendary albums in recent memory. The band, a very deliberate combination of very specific and combative, engaging style that examined the ill effects of sanitized, suburban life upon America’s youth. Debut album Portrait of an American Family is easily one of the most frightening and bizarre records of the 90s, as glammed up post-punk kids with serial killer surnames play blistering rock over Sid and Marty Kroft samples and bizarre snippets from Twin Peaks and Marlon Brando’s quote “Go and smile, you cunt” from Cake and Sodomy. In the era of wine and roses, there were worms and sludge everywhere, and by 1996, Marilyn Manson, armed with Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor’s brilliance behind the boards were ready to assault the universe, and succeeded with Antichrist Superstar
For those who found Andrew Lloyd Weber’s 1960s rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar vaguely blasphemous, this record is a punch in the mouth to that notion. Separated into three parts, the single album chronicles the ascension and denigration of the “worm,” intended to be the souls of humans who deign to be accepted as holy, but are doomed to hell. In invoking the concepts of satanist Kenneth Anger in the names of the cycles “Inauguration of the Worm” and “Disintegrator Rising,” Manson’s playing in some heavy territory here, but doesn’t tread lightly at all. In fact, the album is so sonically excellent in being so heavy and tuneful that the mix of subject matter and expert song crafting lifted the album to #3 on Billboard’s Album chart.
Lead single “The Beautiful People” is shocking bombast wrapped in an unrepentantly mean-spirited nature. “And I don’t want you and I don’t need you/Don’t bother to resist, or I’ll beat you/It’s not your fault that you’re always wrong/The weak ones are there to justify the strong/The beautiful people, the beautiful people/It’s all relative to the size of your steeple/You can’t see the forest for the trees/You can’t smell your own shit on your knees/There’s no time to discriminate,/Hate every motherfucker/That’s in your way. Vile, cretinous and deviant, the song bespeaks a notion of distrust in the leaders of society both physical and spiritual in a manner not ever represented. Yes, we as a music listening public have always hated authority of all sorts, but “The Beautiful People’s” Bomb Squad production like assault on the senses mixed with Manson’s screaming really kicks the song into a different stratosphere.
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Hate was immediate and strong for the album as Christian protesters took issue with much of the imagery and packaging of the album, as well as the message, finding Manson’s Nietzche inspired ramblings on tracks like “Irresponsible Hate Anthem,” “Tourniquet” and “Angle With the Scabbed Wings” to be absolutely blasphemous and a danger to the goals and efforts of Christianity worldwide. In couching the album so completely in hysteria causing notions, it successfully allowed for the group to become celebrities. In going SO hard, Marilyn Manson became international celebrities. Yes, there is great intellectual worth to the album, but, to the mainstream, this band of “antichrists” successfully worked a system predicated on latching onto hate speech with venomous intent.
Antichrist Superstar is easily one of the hardest albums ever released because it assaults the twin edifices of complacency and lack of self-reflection that had come to be problematic in the world at that moment. Yes, attacking religion and using it as a guide to make a point may be slightly problematic to the average person, but, in looking at the post Antichrist Superstar universe, there may have been some worth and weight to the nature of Manson’s concerns. Trent Reznor’s job as a producer with the band cannot go without appreciation as well. The band is in many ways crafted in his image of being forward thinking, dark, bleak and having a terrifyingly powerful sound. This album celebrates everything right in being so “wrong,” and having the desire to believe in one’s creative instincts. The best are often the hardest, the ones not afraid of what their creativity hath wrought.
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