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Holy Wood (In the Shadow of the Valley of Death)
Encyclopedia
Holy Wood is the fourth studio album
by American rock
band Marilyn Manson
, released in November 2000 through Nothing
and Interscope Records
. The album marked a return to the industrial
and alternative metal
style of the band's earlier efforts, after the modernized glam rock
sound of Mechanical Animals
. As their first release following the Columbine High School massacre
of April 20, 1999, Holy Wood served as Marilyn Manson's rebuttal to the accusations leveled against them in the wake of that incident. The band's frontman, Marilyn Manson
, described the record as "a declaration of war".
A rock opera
concept album
, it is the final instalment in a trilogy that includes Antichrist Superstar
and Mechanical Animals. After its release Manson revealed that the over-arching story within the trilogy is presented in reverse chronological order; Holy Wood, therefore, begins the story. It was written in the singer's former home in the Hollywood Hills
and recorded in several "undisclosed" locations, including Death Valley
and Laurel Canyon.
Upon its release Holy Wood received mixed to positive reviews, with many critics noting that, while ambitious, it was lacking in execution. Initially the album was not as commercially successful as the group's two previous outings, taking three years to attain a gold certification from the RIAA. Nevertheless, with worldwide sales of over 9 million copies as of 2011, it has become one of the most successful of their career. It spawned three singles and an abandoned film project that was modified into the as-yet unreleased Holy Wood
novel. Marilyn Manson supported the album with the controversial Guns, God and Government Tour
.
On November 10, 2010, British rock magazine Kerrang!
published a 10th-anniversary commemorative piece in which they called the album "Manson's finest hour ... A decade on, there has still not been as eloquent and savage a musical attack on the media and mainstream culture ... [It is] still scathingly relevant [and] a credit to a man who refused to sit and take it, but instead come out swinging."
iconoclast and a rallying icon for alienated youth.
As their popularity rose, the transgressive and confrontational nature of their music and imagery angered social conservatives. Politicians from both sides of the political spectrum lobbied to have their performances banned, citing rumors that the shows contained animal sacrifices, bestiality, and rape. Their concerts were picketed by religious advocates and parent groups, who asserted that their music had a corrupting influence on youth culture by inciting "rape, murder, blasphemy and suicide".
On April 20, 1999, Columbine High School
students Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold
took the lives of 12 students and one teacher, while injuring 21 others, before taking their own lives. In the aftermath of the fourth-deadliest school massacre in United States history, the band became a "scapegoat
". Early news media reports alleged that the shooters were fans of the band, and had worn the group's concert t-shirts during the massacre. Speculation in the national media and among the public led to Manson's music and imagery being blamed for inciting Harris and Klebold. However, later reports pointed out that the two were not fans of the band, and considered them "a joke". In spite of this, the group—alongside other bands and forms of popular entertainment such as movies and video games—received widespread criticism from religious, political, and entertainment industry figures.
A day after the shootings, Michigan State Senator Dale Shugars attended the band's concert at the Van Andel Arena
in Grand Rapids, Michigan
, to conduct research for a proposed bill which would require parental warnings on concert tickets and promotional material for any performer that had released a record bearing the Parental Advisory sticker
in the last five years. He concluded that the band was "part of a drug-cultural type of thing, with a subculture of violence and killing and hatred" and added that "[they] can be part of the blame". During their appearance on Meet the Press
on April 25, 1999, conservative pundit William Bennett
and longtime Manson critic US Senator Joseph Lieberman claimed the group bore responsibility for the massacre. Three days later the city of Fresno, California, unanimously passed a resolution condemning "Marilyn Manson or any other negative entertainer who encourages anger and hate ... as an offensive threat to the children of this community." On the same day, the band announced the postponement of the last five North American dates of their tour out of respect for the victims and their grieving families.
The following day ten US Senators, spearheaded by Sam Brownback
of Kansas, signed and sent a letter to Edgar Bronfman Jr.—president of Seagrams, which owned Interscope Records—requesting the voluntary cessation of his company's distribution to children of "music that glorifies violence." The letter cited Marilyn Manson, among other bands, as producing songs which "eerily reflect" the actions of Harris and Klebold. Later in the day, the band announced the outright cancellation of the remaining shows. On May 1, 1999, Manson published a Rolling Stone
magazine op-ed piece title "Columbine: Whose Fault Is It?" as a response to the accusations. In it, he commented,
On May 4, 1999, a hearing on the marketing and distribution practices of violent content to minors by the television, music, film, and video game industries was conducted before the United States Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation
. The committee heard testimony from cultural observers, professors, and mental-health professionals that included William Bennett and the Archbishop of Denver, Reverend Charles J. Chaput
. Participants criticized the band, its label-mate Nine Inch Nails
, and the 1999 film The Matrix
for their alleged contribution to the environment that made tragedies like Columbine possible. The committee requested that the Federal Trade Commission
and the United States Department of Justice
investigate the entertainment industry's marketing practices to minors.
Following the conclusion of the European and Japanese festival leg of the tour on August 8, 1999, the band retreated from public view. The album's early development was marked by Manson's three-month seclusion at his home in the Hollywood Hills
. The singer spent this time vacillating on how to respond to the accusations. He admitted that the maelstrom caused him to reconsider whether to continue pursuing his career: "[t]here was a bit of trepidation, [in] deciding, 'Is it worth it? Are people understanding what I'm trying to say? Am I even gonna be allowed to say it?' Because I definitely had every single door shut in my face ... there were not a lot of people who stood behind me." He told Alternative Press that he felt his safety was threatened, to the point where he "could be shot Mark David Chapman-style." Manson decided that it was less prudent for a controversial artist to allow his detractors to use his work (and entertainment in general) as a scapegoat, and began work on a new album as a more extensive counterattack.
would "be my only contact with humanity."
The album is the group's most collaborative effort to date, with everyone contributing to the songwriting process, resulting in a more unified sound. Most of the effort was shared by Twiggy Ramirez, John 5, and Marilyn Manson; keyboardist Madonna Wayne Gacy
provided input on the songs "President Dead" and "Cruci-Fiction in Space", while Ginger Fish
provided all of the drum work. Manson said that his songwriting sessions with John 5 were very focused; most of the songs were complete before being brought to the band for consideration, where they were enthusiastically received. In contrast, his sessions with Ramirez were far less rigorous, as the two experimented with absinthe
. During the process the band wrote a hundred pieces, of which 25 or 30 were developed into songs. Of these, 19 tracks were selected for the album.
Recording took place in several "undisclosed" locations, including Death Valley
and Rick Rubin
's The Mansion Studio in Laurel Canyon. Locations were chosen for the atmosphere they were intended to impart to the music. Mix engineer
Dave Sardy
co-produced the album with Manson. Bon Harris
, of seminal Electronic body music
group Nitzer Ebb
, supplied programming and pre-production editing. Manson announced on December 16, 1999, that the album was progressing under the working title
"In the Shadow of the Valley of Death" and would be represented by the alchemical symbol
for Mercury.
The band's numerous excursions to Death Valley were undertaken to "imprint the feeling of the desert into [the band's] minds", in order to avoid composing songs that sounded artificial. Experimental recordings and "acoustic" songs were recorded using live instrumentation
. Manson later explained that the acoustic songs were only "acoustic" in the sense of not being produced electrically; the album's sonic landscape is fundamentally "electronic". Harris' programming skills proved instrumental, as the band recorded found and natural sounds, which he manipulated into new sonic elements.
The band rented recording time at The Mansion Studio, as its cavernous rooms are suitable for recording drums. The band found the space inspiring, and spent a lot of time there; they found they could accomplish more there than in the limited space of Manson's home studio. Ramirez later had blurry recollections of the sessions; he found there were "a lot of different emotions racing around [us]". The house, which once belong to escape artist
Harry Houdini
, is rumored to be haunted. Gacy said that he spent the majority of his time working on a computer and synthesizer, "mess[ing] around with prime number loops where they only intersect every three days and I'd check up on what kind of music they'd be making. You never know what's going to happen." In contrast, Fish worked constantly; the bulk of his contributions to the recording process took place at The Mansion.
On February 23, 2000, Manson delivered a 20-minute lecture, via satellite, at a current events convention titled "DisinfoCon 2000
", aimed at exposing and dispelling disinformation
. Six days later the album was officially titled Holy Wood (In the Shadow of the Valley of Death). By April 12, 2000, the band had reached the final stages of recording, and Manson posted footage of the recording studio. In pre-release interviews he noted that the record would be "a very sharp pencil" that would appeal to Marilyn Manson fans.
to produce and distribute the film and its soundtrack. At the 1999 MTV Europe Music Awards in Dublin, Ireland, where the band was to perform on November 11, he revealed film's title and his projected production plans. He also met with Chilean avant-garde
film maker Alejandro Jodorowsky
at the event to discuss the possibility of working on the film, although no final decision was made. By February 29, 2000, the deal had fallen through due to Manson's reservations that New Line Cinema was taking the film in a direction that would not have "retained his artistic vision."
Abandoning his attempt to bring Holy Wood to the big screen, Manson instead announced plans to put out two books to accompany the album. The first was a "graphic and phantasmagoric" novelized adaptation, intended to be released shortly after the record by ReganBooks
, a division of HarperCollins
. The style of the novel was inspired by the authors William S. Burroughs
, Kurt Vonnegut
, Aldous Huxley
, and Philip K. Dick
. It was to be followed by a coffee table book
of images created for the project.
In an interview with Manson in December 2000 novelist Chuck Palahniuk
briefly mentioned the Holy Wood novel, and complimented its style. The book was due for release in the spring of 2001. Neither book has yet been released, allegedly due to a publishing dispute.
is "Death Valley", which is used as "a metaphor for the outcast and the imperfect of the world."
The central character is its ill-fated protagonist "Adam Kadmon
", a figure borrowed from the Kabbalah
, in which he is described as the "Primal Man". In the similar Sufic and Alevi
philosophies, he is described as the "Perfect or Complete Man"—an archetype for humanity. He undertakes a journey out of Death Valley and into Holy Wood. Idealistic and naïve, he attempts a subversive revolution through music.
While disenchanted when his revolution is consumed by Holy Wood's ideology of "Guns, God and Government", he is co-opted into their culture of death and fame, where celebrity worship, violence, and scapegoatism are held as the moral values of a religion rooted in martyrdom. In this religion dead celebrities are venerated into saints and President John F. "Jack" Kennedy
is idolized as the modern-day Christ.
This religion, called "Celebritarianism", is a deliberate parallel of Christianity. The intention is to critique the dead-celebrity phenomenon in American culture and the role that the Crucifixion of Jesus
plays as its blueprint. This concept was extended to the worldwide Guns, God and Government Tour
that supported the album; the tour's logo was a rifle and handguns arranged to resemble the Christian cross.
Manson told Rolling Stone
that the storyline is semi-autobiographical. While it can be viewed on several levels, Manson states the simplest interpretation is to see it as a story about an angry youth whose revolution becomes commercialized, which leads him to "destroy the thing he has created, which is himself."
, conservative American Christianity, and traditional family values. The album illustrates the harmful roles they play in the glorification and acceptance of wholesale violence in "mainstream" culture. In the album these factors are referred to by the slogan "Guns, God and Government." Seeing similarities between the tumultuous and culturally-defining Cold War
period of 1960s America and the 1990s, Manson draws numerous allegories to that decade and other events and figures in pop culture history. Music journalist Charlotte Robinson pointed out that it is difficult to assess the "narrative's effectiveness" without the book and film, and stated that "the album doesn't tell much of a story, instead presenting variations on the same themes."
Manson was drawn to The Beatles
' White Album
due to its purported role in the Charles Manson 'Family' murders and parallels he saw between that incident and Columbine. Manson said, "[It] had a lot of very subversive messages on it. Ones they intended and ones that may've been misinterpreted by [convicted mass murder conspirator] Charles Manson". It was the first piece of music to be blamed for inspiring violence: "When you've got 'Helter Skelter
' [taken from a Beatles song of the same name] written in blood on someone's wall, it's a little more damning than anything I've been blamed for." He appreciates the record's power, and it was inspirational towards his album's concept. Holy Wood, he said, "is a tribute to what that record did in history."
Several music reviewers also noted similarities between the anti-hero character of Adam Kadmon and Charles Manson. Marilyn Manson echoed this assessment, and described Holy Wood as a declaration of war on the entertainment industry, "their self-congratulatory attitude, their beliefs that they can never do wrong, ... that they're the center of the universe." He further articulated that "[i]n one way it's defending Hollywood, and in another way it's attacking it for not being brave enough."
A substantial amount of the record analyzes the cultural role of Jesus Christ and the iconography of his crucifixion as the origin of celebrity. The album appraises "our relationship with Christ, and how we outgrew that." He states that where in the past he critiqued religion, with this album accepts the story, and looks for things he could relate to. He discovered Christ was a revolutionary figure—a person who was killed for having dangerous opinions, and was later exploited and merchandised by the church. Manson notes the irony of "religious people who indict entertainment as being violent", because the crucifixion is a consummate icon of sex and violence which made Jesus "the first rock star". He feels that the exploitation of Christ as "the first celebrity" made religion the root of all entertainment.
Christ's death is compared to Abraham Zapruder
's film
of the JFK Assassination, which Manson observed as "the only thing that's happened in modern times to equal the crucifixion." He sarcastically described the historic home movie as a "good clip of mankind's generosity to share his violence with the world in such a cinematic way". Manson stresses the film's cultural importance and notes the irony of showing such violence on the news while complaining about violence in the entertainment industry. He watched the clip numerous times as a child, and finds it the most violent thing he had ever seen. Juxtaposing Christ and Kennedy, he posited,
Manson also cites John Lennon
as an assassination icon, and uses the album to criticize the news media's veneration of people into media martyrdom, and the tendency to turn death into spectacle to cater to the American public's appetite for violence, tragedy, and celebrity. He uses this to rebut claims that Marilyn Manson's music was responsible for Columbine. He wonders how the media would have covered the crucifixion, and linked these observations to Columbine during an interview on the O'Reilly Factor. Bill O'Reilly
argued that "disturbed kids" who lack direction from responsible parents could misinterpret the message of his music to be, in fact, an endorsement of the mentality that "when I'm dead [then] everybody's going to know me." Manson responded:
In spite of the many references to, and thematic fascination with, the three iconic men, Manson was reluctant to draw any comparison between them and himself, which he said would have amounted to pretentiousness. Instead he volunteered, "[w]hat I did find was parallels in their stories and my story, and I tried to maybe learn from their mistakes and what they tried to do ... You realise you can't change the world and you can only change yourself, and I think that's what [they] found out." He further added, "[f]or me it was about learning from that and trying to break the evolution of man [since] it's man's nature to be violent."
White Album ... in the sense that it's very experimental. I play a lot of keyboards, we switched things around, wrote in the desert ... it's experimental and when I think of experimental I think of The White Album." The 1969 Rolling Stones album Let It Bleed
, another source of inspiration, was written in the same house where he wrote Holy Wood.
Sonically, Manson said the record was "arrogant in an art rock
sense", yet it turned out to be the "heaviest" record the band has done. "It needs to be to complete the trilogy," said Manson. The majority of the songs contain three or four parts, similar to art rock, due to the way that the story is told. The band took great care to avoid being "self-indulgent." Manson contended that the record is entertaining and pleasing. "Art rock is only self indulgent if it bores you." According to CMJ New Music Monthly
, the songs are "angry and complex." Rolling Stone magazine noted that "on such songs as 'Target Audience', 'Disposable Teens' and 'Cruci-Fiction in Space', [the band] dismantles the slick, glam-tinged sound of [Mechanical] Animals in favor of the more brutal industrial-goth grind of his first [two] albums."
Similar to Antichrist Superstar, Holy Wood utilizes a compositional device called the song cycle
structure, which divides the record into four movements—A: In the Shadow, D: The Androgyne, A: Of Red Earth and M: The Fallen—to form the framework of Kadmon's story. The storyline unfolds in a multi-tiered progression of extended metaphors and allusions playing in Manson's psyche. For instance, the album's title was not just a reference to the Hollywood sign
but also to "the tree of knowledge that Adam took the first fruit from when he fell out of paradise, the wood that Christ was crucified on, the wood that [Lee Harvey] Oswald's rifle is made from and the wood that so many coffins are made of."
"GodEatGod" follows Adam as he contemplates in the desert. "The Love Song" was written as an anthem for Holy Wood's religion of Celebritarianism. Manson explained the idea for the song comes from his observation that "Love Song" is one of the most common titles in music, but weaves in a metaphor about guns: "I was suggesting with the lyrics that the father is the hand, the mother is the gun, and the children are the bullets. Where you shoot them is your responsibility as parents." The chorus is a rhetorical take on an American bumper sticker, which asks: "Do you love your God, gun, government?"
UK music magazine Kerrang!
described "The Fight Song" as a "playground punk anthem." Manson noted that the song's theme is Adam's desire to be a part of Holy Wood; the track is inherently autobiographical. Speaking broadly, it is about "a person who's grown up all his life thinking that the grass is greener on the other side, but when he finally [gets there], he realises that it's worse than where he came from and that it's truly exploitative." The line, "The death of one is a tragedy, the death of millions is just a statistic", relates to the disvaluation of the deaths of ordinary people who die every day, who are ignored by the media, compared to the frenzy that results in the press when someone dies in a more dramatic way.
"Disposable Teens" is a "signature Marilyn Manson song." Its bouncing guitar riff and teutonic staccato has its roots in former glam rock
er and convicted pedophile Gary Glitter
's song "Rock and Roll, Pt.2
". Its lyrical themes tackle the disenfranchisement of contemporary youth, "particularly those that have been [brought up] to feel like accidents", with the revolutionary idealism of their parent's generation. The influence of The Beatles was critical in this song; the chorus echoes the disillusionment expressed in opening lines of their White Album song "Revolution 1
". Here the sentiment was appropriated as a rallying cry for "disposable teens" against the shortcomings of "this so-called generation of revolutionaries", whom the song indicted: "You said you wanted evolution, the ape was a great big hit. You say want a revolution, man, and I say that you're full of shit." Manson singles out "Target Audience (Narcissus Narcosis)" as his favorite song on the record and that, to him, it related to every person's desire for self-actualization.
Borrowing a riff from English alternative rock
band Radiohead
, "President Dead" is a guitar-driven song that showcases John 5's technical skills. The song opens with a vocal sample of Don Gardiner's ABC News Radio
broadcast of the death of John F. Kennedy, which is the track's subject matter. On another note, the song is 3:13 in length — a deliberate numerological reference to frame 313 of the Zapruder film, the frame of the fatal head shot, and the point where JFK became an American media martyr, "because the production value of his murder was so grand; the cinematography was so well done." "In the Shadow of the Valley of Death" is an introspective song where Adam is at his most emotionally vulnerable, to the point of wanting to give up. "Cruci-Fiction in Space" further delves into the Kennedy assassination, and concludes that human beings have evolved from monkeys to men and, finally, into guns. "A Place in the Dirt" is another personal song characterized by Adam's rumination and self-analysis of his place in Holy Wood.
"The Nobodies
" is a mournful, elegiac dirge that begins with a synth-drum and harpsichord introduction
. The verse "today I'm dirty and I want to be pretty, tomorrow I know I'm just dirt" is sung with an Iggy Pop
-style vocal delivery that builds to the adrenaline-fuelled chorus of "we are the nobodies, we wanna be somebodies, when we're dead they'll know just who we are. Some children died the other day, we fed machines and then we prayed, puked up and down in morbid faith, you should have seen the ratings that day." CMJ
noted that the song was likely to be interpreted by some people as a tribute to the perpetrators of Columbine, but that its point was not to glorify violence; rather, it was to depict a society drenched in its children's blood. "The Death Song" is the turning point for Adam; he no longer cares. Manson described it as being sarcastic and nihilistic: "it's like 'We have no future and we don't give a fuck'." Kerrang! described it as among the album's "heaviest" songs.
In "Lamb of God", Manson uses the examples of the assassinations of Jesus Christ, JFK, and John Lennon to criticize his accusers. He illustrates their hunger for venerating dead people into martyrs and superstars, and for turning tragedy into televised spectacle. The bridge paraphrases the chorus of "Across the Universe
". Manson notes that even though John Lennon sang that "nothing's going to change my world", "[Lennon's killer] Mark David Chapman came along and proved him very wrong. That was always something, growing up, that was very sad and tragic to me—a song that I always identified with." "Burning Flag" is a heavy metal song that recalls the sound of American industrial metal band Ministry
. Lennon's "Working Class Hero
" was covered in the period between the band's August 30, 2000, appearance at the Kerrang! Awards and the November 14, 2000, launch of the album. In describing Lennon's idealism and influence, Manson said that "some of Lennon's Communist sentiments in his music later in his life were very dangerous. I think he died because of it. I don't think his death was any sort of accident. Aside from that, I think he's one of my favorite songwriters of all time."
cover of the ballad "Little Child" (otherwise known as "Mommy Dear"). He described the album as "the most violent yet beautiful creation we have accomplished. This is a soundtrack for a world that is being sold to kids and then being destroyed by them. But maybe that's exactly what it deserves." An acoustic version of the song "Sick City", from Charles Manson's 1970 album Lie: The Love and Terror Cult, later appeared on February 14, 2000. The song was not intended to be included in either the upcoming album or the Holy Wood feature film.
On April 12, 2000, Manson wrote that they were completing the final stages of recording, and posted a downloadable silent movie that documented the process. This was followed on August 9, 2000, with a posting of the cover of the Holy Wood novel and a sound clip of "The Love Song" the next day. On August 25, 2000, he released three tracks, "Burning Flag", "Cruci-Fiction in Space", and "The Love Song", for digital download on their website. He traveled to the UK to perform "Disposable Teens" on the October 12, 2000, episode of BBC One
's Top of the Pops
. On October 27, 2000, the band launched the worldwide Guns, God and Government Tour. Video footage and photographs from the inaugural show at the Minneapolis Orpheum Theatre and Milwaukee Eagles Ballroom were posted on the band's website on November 2, 2000, which showed them performing "Disposable Teens" and "The Fight Song".
From November 1 to November 13, 2000, the UK division of Nothing/Interscope Records held a contest to promote the album and the launch of the UK version of the band's official website. The contest invited fans to log on the site daily to pick up a series of coded clues which led to a message linked to the album. Fans who solved the riddle received an exclusive download and were entered into a draw to win a week-long trip for two to meet the frontman in Hollywood, California.
In mid 2001 Universal Music Group
received criticism for airing commercials which promoted the album on MTV
's Total Request Live
. Manson voiced suspicion that former Democratic vice presidential candidate
Senator Joseph Lieberman had a part in its orchestration. At the time the Senator had just introduced a bill to the United States Congress called The Media Marketing Accountability Act, which sought to levy criminal penalties against entertainment industry distributors who market violent and sexually explicit media to minors. The proposed legislation stemmed from the publication of the Federal Trade Commission
investigation he, along with senators Brownback and Hatch, had requested from then-US President Bill Clinton
at the May 4, 1999, Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation hearing on entertainment industry marketing practices to minors.
On September 18, 2000, Manson clarified that the album's US release was moved to November 14, 2000, and confirmed that the album's first single would be "Disposable Teens". The postponement was the result of further fine-tuning work being done during the final mixing stage. The album was released on November 13, 2000, in the UK and on December 5, 2000, in Japan, through Nothing and Interscope Records.
On the evening of November 14, 2000, Manson, Ramirez, and John 5 took a short break from the tour to celebrate the album's launch by playing a brief invitation-only acoustic set at the Saci nightclub in New York City. Tickets for the event were given away through radio contests, via the band's website, and by being among the first 100 to buy the album at the Tower Records
store in New York's Broadway Avenue. The set consisted of four songs that included a cover of Lennon's "Working Class Hero" and "Suicide Is Painless
", the theme song for the TV series M*A*S*H. Manson noted that the latter song "[was] far more depressing than anything I could have ever written." The following day he appeared on Total Request Live for a segment titled "Mothers Against Marilyn Manson". The band performed the first single at MTV's New Year's Eve celebration, along with a cover of Cheap Trick
's "Surrender
", and again on January 8, 2001, at the 2001 American Music Awards
.
on Total Request Live on October 25, 2000. In the following weeks the single was released as two standalone single EP
s. The first version, titled "Disposable Teens Pt.1", was released on November 6, 2000, in the UK, and features Manson's cover of "Working Class Hero". It was released as a maxi single
in the UK on August 21, 2002. The second version, titled "Disposable Teens Pt.2", followed on November 14, 2000, and features a cover of "Five to One
" by The Doors
. This version was released in the UK as a maxi single and as a 12" picture disc vinyl EP on October 31, 2000, and on November 6, 2000, respectively.
The second single, "The Fight Song", was also released in three versions. The first version, titled "The Fight Song Pt.1", was released on January 29, 2001, in the US and on February 19, 2001, in the UK. "The Fight Song Pt.1" was released as a 12" picture disc vinyl EP on February 19, 2001, in the UK. Both feature a remix
by Joey Jordison
of the heavy metal
band Slipknot
. The second version, titled "The Fight Song Pt.2", was released on February 2, 2001, in the US and on March 6, 2001, in the UK. The music video was directed by W.I.Z.
. It generated minor controversy for its violent depiction of an American football
game between jocks and goths
, which some sources interpreted to be an exploitation of the Columbine tragedy. Manson dismissed these claims as media hype, adding that "Flak
is my job."
As early as February 10, 2001, Manson indicated that the "The Nobodies" would be the album's third single. The music video, directed by Paul Fedor, premiered on MTV in June 2001. Originally Manson wanted to film the music video in Russia "because the atmosphere, the desolation, the coldness and the architecture would really suit the song." Another early plan was to incorporate the MTV stunt and prank TV series Jackass
, due to the song's inclusion in the show's soundtrack. However, this idea was abandoned after the show drew the ire of Senator Joseph Lieberman. The third single was released in physical format on September 3, 2001, in the UK and, on October 6, 2001, in the US. A remixed version of the song later appeared in the 2001 Johnny Depp
film From Hell
.
and Marilyn Manson. Manson began conceptualizing it as he was writing the songs, and Brown and Manson worked in tandem to realize the imagery after they decided to do the work themselves. It contains many elements from alchemy
and the tarot
.
The album uses the symbol of the planet Mercury, commonly used in alchemy, as an identifying logo. Expanding on its relationship with the album's concept, he stated, "It represents both the androgyne
and the prima materia
, which has been associated with Adam, the first man."
Manson commissioned a redesigned set of fourteen Major Arcana
tarot cards, based on the Rider-Waite deck
. He explained that his interest in tarot was grounded in an attraction to the symbolism rather than the idea of divination. The cards depict each member of the band in a surrealistic
tableaux. Each was reinterpreted to reflect the iconography of the album. For instance, The Emperor
is shown with prosthetic legs and clutching a rifle while sitting in a wheelchair in front of an American flag; The Fool
is depicted walking off a cliff, with grainy images of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis
and a JFK campaign poster in the background; and Justice
weighs The Bible against the Brain. The album's inner sleeve contains nine of these cards: The Magician
, The Devil
, The Emperor, The Hermit
, The Fool, Justice, The High Priestess
, Death
, and The Hierophant
. The remaining extant cards include The Star
, The World
, The Tower
, and The Hanged Man.
The cover art, which portrays Manson as a crucified Jesus Christ with a torn-off mandible, is intended as a criticism of censorship and America's obsession with media martyrs. It is a cropped version of the reinterpreted Hanged Man card. Beneath it is an obscured copy of the coroner's report of John F. Kennedy, showing the words "clinical record" and "autopsy". The Marilyn Manson typeface uses the same font as the Disney World
logo of the 1960s. Manson explained the cover further: "I think it's more offensive to Christians for me to say, 'I believe in the story of Christ and I enjoy the images that you present, but for different reasons than you'. I've taken my own interpretation, that's more offensive than Antichrist Superstar, and just completely disvaluing it. I'm going to turn a bunch of kids onto Christianity in my own sick, twisted way."
The cover generated controversy upon release. Some copies were issued with a cardboard sleeve featuring an alternative cover, as some retailers refused to stock the album with the original artwork. A pastor in Memphis, Tennessee, threatened to go on hunger strike
unless the record was pulled from the shelves. Manson described these actions as attempts at censorship and stated that, "the irony is that my point of the photo on the album was to show people that the crucifixion of Christ is, indeed, a violent image. My jaw is missing as a symbol of this very kind of censorship. This doesn't piss me off as much as it pleases me, because those offended by my album cover have successfully proven my point." Gigwise
ranked the cover 16th on their list of 'The 50 Most Controversial Album Covers Of All Time!'.
, a gatefold
booklet, and a card stock outer slipcase. The limited UK edition CD features a bonus track acoustic version of "The Nobodies", while the limited Japanese edition CD contains the UK bonus track and a live rendition of the song "Mechanical Animals" as bonus material. Universal Music Japan
released an Original Recording Remastered
version of the album in Super High Material CD (SHM-CD) on December 3, 2008, and a limited edition 10th-anniversary commemorative reissue in 2010. The LP vinyl release was pressed on two black discs contained in a gatefold paperboard slipcase. The Compact Cassette
release contained a single cassette tape, a gatefold booklet, and a card stock outer slipcase. Amazon.com
has offered a digital version in MP3
format since November 14, 2000.
, which assigns a normalized
rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average
score of 72 based on 14 reviews, which indicates "generally favorable reviews." Stephen Thomas Erlewine
of allmusic praised it as "the definitive Marilyn Manson album, since it's tuneful and abrasive." He specifically complimented the band for "figur[ing] out [how] to meld the hooks and subtle sonic shading of Mechanical Animals with the ugly, neo-industrial metallicisms of Antichrist [Superstar]" and said that "much of its charm lies in Manson trying so hard, perfecting details ... there's so much effort, Holy Wood winds up a stronger and more consistent album than any of his other work. If there's any problem, it's that Manson's shock rock seems a little quaint in 2000 ... [However,] it's to Warner's [frontman Marilyn Manson] credit as, yes, an artist that Holy Wood works anyway."
Barry Walters of Rolling Stone said, "The band truly rocks: Its malevolent groove fleshes out its leader's usual complaints with an exhilarating swagger that's the essence of rock and roll." LA Weekly
was similarly impressed, and pointed out that "almost all [the songs] contain a double-take chord change or a textural overdose or a mind-blowing bridge, and they'll be terroristic in concert." Revolver magazine
editor Christopher Scapelliti was most impressed by the record's earnestness, and stated that "For all Holy Wood's well-tempered melodies and drunken pandemonium, what comes across loudest on the album is not the music but the sense of injury expressed in Manson's lyrics. Like Plastic Ono Band, John Lennon's bare-boned solo debut, Holy Wood screams with a primal fury that's evident even in its quietest moments." According to Billboard
magazine, the album proved that Manson is "one of the most skilled lyricists in rock today."
Other critics found shortcomings with the album. Drowned in Sound
, which assigns a normalized rating out of 10, gave the album a score of 10. They noted, however, "There [are] a number of criticisms that could come Marilyn Manson's way: too much more of the same, too much philosophical posing, too much sloganeering. Regardless, all this needs to attain perfection is a few minutes shaved off of the overall running time ... [and] lyrically it actually says something intelligent for once and musically it has a lot more variation and scope than the Limp Bizkit
s of the world." PopMatters
agreed and stated, "The central flaw of Holy Wood is that the power of its message, an important and provocative one, is watered down by its artistic pretensions. While Holy Wood is often affecting, it would be a better album if it was shorter and dealt with its subject matter directly, instead of through the veil of the 'concept album'." Robert Hilburn
of the Los Angeles Times
was also disappointed that Holy Wood did not live up to "the promise of Mechanical Animals." In contrast to Erlewine, he viewed the musical cross-pollination of Antichrist Superstar and Mechanical Animals as confusion on the band's part on "where to turn [musically], as if uncertain which is the right move commercially in a rock world taken over by Limp Bizkit and Eminem
." He concluded that "[t]his is music that sounds reasonable on the radio but crumbles under scrutiny."
Joshua Klein of The A.V. Club
found himself wholly unconvinced, and remarked that "[this] sort of agitprop
is thoroughly predictable, and the only thing that could prove shocking about Manson's antics would be if the singer actually evinced any power over his followers. Here, he seems entranced by his own power, which may be why his dark worldview sounds baseless even as he offers sharp hooks others would kill for."
's sales projections in 2000 estimated its first week sales would be around 150,000 units nationally, significantly less than the 223,000 units sold by Mechanical Animals in its first week. In the US, the album debuted and peaked at № 13 on the Billboard 200
, with first week sales of 117,000, initially making it a commercial disappointment.
The record only spent a total of 13 consecutive weeks on the charts before exiting completely on March 3, 2001, making it the shortest-charting full-length LP offering by the band until The High End of Low
(2009). It was completely overshadowed by its sister albums, Antichrist Superstar and Mechanical Animals, which spent 52 and 33 weeks on the charts, respectively. The album's sales figures were equally dismal, and it took the record three years to attain a gold certification from the RIAA, in March 2003, for shipments of over 500,000 units. However, in four other countries, including Australia, Austria, Italy, and Sweden, the album peaked in the Top 10. In the UK, the album peaked at № 23. As of 2011, the album has sold over 9 million copies worldwide, making it one of the most successful in the band's catalogue.
Seventeen months after Holy Wood (In the Shadow of the Valley of Death)s release, Manson commented on the album's lackluster US sales. He attributed the lack of commercial appeal to the musical climate of the time, but argued that it stood up comparatively well to contemporary albums of the rock genre. He noted that the band's US sales figures are usually in the region of one or two million records, so he did not find the sales figures disappointing.
named Holy Wood the year's "Best Album" at their annual Kerrang! Awards. Manson sardonically remarked that "[there is] nothing like a good school shooting to inspire a record" when he collected the award.
Kerrang! ranked Holy Wood 9th in their list of Albums of the Year 2000. British magazine NME
ranked the album 34th in their critic's picks for the 50 Best Albums of 2000 in their "Decade In Music" series, calling it "A series of heroic rallying cries for the disenfranchised, while also baiting the American Far Right for all it's worth." The record ranked 30th in the Critics Top 50 and 9th in the Popular Poll of German magazine Musik Express/Sounds in their Albums of the Year 2000. The French edition of the British magazine Rock Sound
ranked Holy Wood 15th in the Le choix de la rédaction ("Editor's choice") and 5th in Le choix des lecteurs ("Reader's choice") of their Choix des critiques ("Critic's choice") Albums of the Year 2000. British magazine Record Collector
also listed the album among their Best of 2000 list.
, religious, and "Celebritarian" imagery in mind. Manson had several costume changes throughout the sets, ranging from a bishop's dalmatic
and mitre
(often confused for Papal regalia
); a costume made from taxidermied
animal anatomies (for example, an epaulette
made from a horse's tail and a shirt made from skinned goat heads and ostrich spines); his signature black leather corset
, g-string
, and garter stocking
ensemble; an elaborate Roman
legionary
-style Imperial galea; an Allgemeine SS-style
peaked police cap; a black-and-white fur coat; and a giant rising conical skirt that lifted him 12 metres (39.4 ft) into the air.
The Ozzfest
leg was particularly notable on this tour, since it marked the band's first performance in Denver, Colorado
, (on June 22, 2001, at the Mile High Stadium
) following the Columbine High School massacre in nearby Littleton. After initially pulling out due to scheduling conflicts, the band altered their plans in order to accommodate the Denver date. The group's decision met heavy resistance from conservative groups. Manson received numerous death threats and calls to skip the date. A group of church leaders and families related to Columbine formed an organization specifically to oppose the show, called 'Citizens for Peace and Respect', which drew the support of Colorado governor
Bill Owens and representative Tom Tancredo
. On their website they asserted that the band "promotes hate, violence, death, suicide, drug use, and the attitudes and actions of the Columbine killers." In response, Manson issued a statement saying,
Two concert films depicting the worldwide tour were recorded. The Guns, God and Government DVD, released by Eagle Rock Entertainment
on October 29, 2002, featured live concert footage from performances in Los Angeles, Europe, Russia, and Japan. It also included a 30-minute behind-the-scenes featurette titled The Death Parade, with guest appearances from Ozzy Osbourne
and Eminem
. Seven years later, it was followed by Guns, God and Government – Live in L.A. Released on Blu-ray format by Eagle Rock Entertainment division Eagle Records on November 17, 2009, it depicted the sixteen-song set of the Los Angeles performance in its entirety.
Production
Studio album
A studio album is an album made up of tracks recorded in the controlled environment of a recording studio. A studio album contains newly written and recorded or previously unreleased or remixed material, distinguishing itself from a compilation or reissue album of previously recorded material, or...
by American rock
Rock music
Rock music is a genre of popular music that developed during and after the 1960s, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, itself heavily influenced by rhythm and blues and country music...
band Marilyn Manson
Marilyn Manson (band)
Marilyn Manson is an American metal band from Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Formed in 1989 by Brian Warner and Scott Putesky, the group was originally named Marilyn Manson & the Spooky Kids with their uniquely theatrical performances gathering a local cult following in the early '90s. This attention...
, released in November 2000 through Nothing
Nothing Records
Nothing Records was an American record label, specializing in industrial rock and electronic music, founded by John Malm Jr. and Trent Reznor in 1992...
and Interscope Records
Interscope Records
Interscope Records is an American record label owned by Universal Music Group that currently operates as one third of UMG's Interscope-Geffen-A&M label group.-History:...
. The album marked a return to the industrial
Industrial metal
Industrial metal is a musical genre that draws from industrial music and many different types of heavy metal, using repeating metal guitar riffs, sampling, synthesizer or sequencer lines, and distorted vocals. Founding industrial metal acts include Ministry, Godflesh, and KMFDM.Industrial metal's...
and alternative metal
Alternative metal
Alternative metal is a genre of alternative rock and heavy metal that gained popularity in the early 1990s. Most notably, alternative metal bands are characterized by heavy guitar riffs and experimental approaches to heavy music.-Origins:...
style of the band's earlier efforts, after the modernized glam rock
Glam rock
Glam rock is a style of rock and pop music that developed in the UK in the early 1970s, which was performed by singers and musicians who wore outrageous clothes, makeup and hairstyles, particularly platform-soled boots and glitter...
sound of Mechanical Animals
Mechanical Animals
Mechanical Animals is the third full-length studio album by American rock band Marilyn Manson. It was released on September 14, 1998, in Australia and on September 15, 1998, in the US, Germany and France through Nothing and Interscope Records and marked the beginning of the band's brief foray into...
. As their first release following the Columbine High School massacre
Columbine High School massacre
The Columbine High School massacre occurred on Tuesday, April 20, 1999, at Columbine High School in Columbine, an unincorporated area of Jefferson County, Colorado, United States, near Denver and Littleton. Two senior students, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, embarked on a massacre, killing 12...
of April 20, 1999, Holy Wood served as Marilyn Manson's rebuttal to the accusations leveled against them in the wake of that incident. The band's frontman, Marilyn Manson
Marilyn Manson
Marilyn Manson may refer to:* Marilyn Manson , an American rock musician* Marilyn Manson , the American rock band led by the singer of the same name...
, described the record as "a declaration of war".
A rock opera
Rock opera
A rock opera is a work of rock music that presents a storyline told over multiple parts, songs or sections in the manner of opera. A rock opera differs from a conventional rock album, which usually includes songs that are not unified by a common theme or narrative. More recent developments include...
concept album
Concept album
In music, a concept album is an album that is "unified by a theme, which can be instrumental, compositional, narrative, or lyrical." Commonly, concept albums tend to incorporate preconceived musical or lyrical ideas rather than being improvised or composed in the studio, with all songs contributing...
, it is the final instalment in a trilogy that includes Antichrist Superstar
Antichrist Superstar
Antichrist Superstar is the second full-length studio album by American rock band Marilyn Manson. It was released on October 8, 1996 in the US through Nothing and Interscope Records. The record's success in mainstream charts propelled the band into a household name and turned its frontman overnight...
and Mechanical Animals. After its release Manson revealed that the over-arching story within the trilogy is presented in reverse chronological order; Holy Wood, therefore, begins the story. It was written in the singer's former home in the Hollywood Hills
Hollywood Hills
The Hollywood Hills is an affluent and exclusive neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, in the southeastern Santa Monica Mountains. It is bound by Laurel Canyon Boulevard to the west, Vermont Avenue to the east, Mulholland Drive to the north, and Sunset Boulevard to the south.-Hollywood Hills...
and recorded in several "undisclosed" locations, including Death Valley
Death Valley
Death Valley is a desert valley located in Eastern California. Situated within the Mojave Desert, it features the lowest, driest, and hottest locations in North America. Badwater, a basin located in Death Valley, is the specific location of the lowest elevation in North America at 282 feet below...
and Laurel Canyon.
Upon its release Holy Wood received mixed to positive reviews, with many critics noting that, while ambitious, it was lacking in execution. Initially the album was not as commercially successful as the group's two previous outings, taking three years to attain a gold certification from the RIAA. Nevertheless, with worldwide sales of over 9 million copies as of 2011, it has become one of the most successful of their career. It spawned three singles and an abandoned film project that was modified into the as-yet unreleased Holy Wood
Holy Wood (book)
Holy Wood is an unpublished novel by Marilyn Manson, written between 1999 and 2000...
novel. Marilyn Manson supported the album with the controversial Guns, God and Government Tour
Guns, God and Government Tour
Guns, God and Government was a worldwide arena tour by American rock band Marilyn Manson. It was the eighth tour the band embarked upon and the fourth to span over multiple legs. It was launched 17 days ahead in support of their fourth full-length studio LP, Holy Wood , which was released on...
.
On November 10, 2010, British rock magazine Kerrang!
Kerrang!
Kerrang! is a UK-based magazine devoted to rock music published by Bauer Media Group. It was first published on June 6, 1981 as a one-off supplement in the Sounds newspaper...
published a 10th-anniversary commemorative piece in which they called the album "Manson's finest hour ... A decade on, there has still not been as eloquent and savage a musical attack on the media and mainstream culture ... [It is] still scathingly relevant [and] a credit to a man who refused to sit and take it, but instead come out swinging."
Background and development
During the 1990s Marilyn Manson and his eponymous band established themselves as one of the most controversial rock acts in music history. The band became a household name with the mainstream success of their albums Antichrist Superstar (1996) and Mechanical Animals (1998). By the time of their Rock Is Dead Tour in 1999, the band's outspoken frontman had become a culture warCulture war
The culture war in American usage is a metaphor used to claim that political conflict is based on sets of conflicting cultural values. The term frequently implies a conflict between those values considered traditionalist or conservative and those considered progressive or liberal...
iconoclast and a rallying icon for alienated youth.
As their popularity rose, the transgressive and confrontational nature of their music and imagery angered social conservatives. Politicians from both sides of the political spectrum lobbied to have their performances banned, citing rumors that the shows contained animal sacrifices, bestiality, and rape. Their concerts were picketed by religious advocates and parent groups, who asserted that their music had a corrupting influence on youth culture by inciting "rape, murder, blasphemy and suicide".
On April 20, 1999, Columbine High School
Columbine High School
Columbine High School or CHS is a high school in unincorporated Jefferson County, Colorado, United States.- History :Columbine High School opened in the fall of 1973. There was no senior class in its first year. The school's first graduating class was the class of 1975...
students Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold
Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold
Eric David Harris and Dylan Bennet Klebold were American high school seniors who committed the Columbine High School massacre. They killed 13 people—including teacher Dave Sanders—and injured 24 others, three of whom were injured as they escaped the attack...
took the lives of 12 students and one teacher, while injuring 21 others, before taking their own lives. In the aftermath of the fourth-deadliest school massacre in United States history, the band became a "scapegoat
Scapegoat
Scapegoating is the practice of singling out any party for unmerited negative treatment or blame. Scapegoating may be conducted by individuals against individuals , individuals against groups , groups against individuals , and groups against groups Scapegoating is the practice of singling out any...
". Early news media reports alleged that the shooters were fans of the band, and had worn the group's concert t-shirts during the massacre. Speculation in the national media and among the public led to Manson's music and imagery being blamed for inciting Harris and Klebold. However, later reports pointed out that the two were not fans of the band, and considered them "a joke". In spite of this, the group—alongside other bands and forms of popular entertainment such as movies and video games—received widespread criticism from religious, political, and entertainment industry figures.
A day after the shootings, Michigan State Senator Dale Shugars attended the band's concert at the Van Andel Arena
Van Andel Arena
The Van Andel Arena is a 10,834-seat multi-purpose arena, situated in the Heartside district, of Grand Rapids, Michigan. After a $75 million construction effort, the arena opened on October 8, 1996 and since has attracted over five million patrons. It is home to the popular Grand Rapids Griffins...
in Grand Rapids, Michigan
Grand Rapids, Michigan
Grand Rapids is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan. The city is located on the Grand River about 40 miles east of Lake Michigan. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 188,040. In 2010, the Grand Rapids metropolitan area had a population of 774,160 and a combined statistical area, Grand...
, to conduct research for a proposed bill which would require parental warnings on concert tickets and promotional material for any performer that had released a record bearing the Parental Advisory sticker
Parental Advisory
Parental Advisory is a message affixed by the Recording Industry Association of America to audio and recordings in the United States containing excessive use of profane language and/or sexual references. Albums began to be labeled for "explicit lyrics" in 1985, after pressure from the Parents...
in the last five years. He concluded that the band was "part of a drug-cultural type of thing, with a subculture of violence and killing and hatred" and added that "[they] can be part of the blame". During their appearance on Meet the Press
Meet the Press
Meet the Press is a weekly American television news/interview program produced by NBC. It is the longest-running television series in American broadcasting history, despite bearing little resemblance to the original format of the program seen in its television debut on November 6, 1947. It has been...
on April 25, 1999, conservative pundit William Bennett
William Bennett
William John "Bill" Bennett is an American conservative pundit, politician, and political theorist. He served as United States Secretary of Education from 1985 to 1988. He also held the post of Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy under George H. W...
and longtime Manson critic US Senator Joseph Lieberman claimed the group bore responsibility for the massacre. Three days later the city of Fresno, California, unanimously passed a resolution condemning "Marilyn Manson or any other negative entertainer who encourages anger and hate ... as an offensive threat to the children of this community." On the same day, the band announced the postponement of the last five North American dates of their tour out of respect for the victims and their grieving families.
The following day ten US Senators, spearheaded by Sam Brownback
Sam Brownback
Samuel Dale "Sam" Brownback is the 46th and current Governor of Kansas. A member of the Republican Party, he served as a U.S. Senator from Kansas from 1996 to 2011, and as a U.S. Representative for Kansas's 2nd congressional district from 1995 to 1996...
of Kansas, signed and sent a letter to Edgar Bronfman Jr.—president of Seagrams, which owned Interscope Records—requesting the voluntary cessation of his company's distribution to children of "music that glorifies violence." The letter cited Marilyn Manson, among other bands, as producing songs which "eerily reflect" the actions of Harris and Klebold. Later in the day, the band announced the outright cancellation of the remaining shows. On May 1, 1999, Manson published a Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...
magazine op-ed piece title "Columbine: Whose Fault Is It?" as a response to the accusations. In it, he commented,
On May 4, 1999, a hearing on the marketing and distribution practices of violent content to minors by the television, music, film, and video game industries was conducted before the United States Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation
United States Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation
The United States Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation is a standing committee of the United States Senate in charge of all senate matters related to the following subjects:* Coast Guard* Coastal zone management* Communications...
. The committee heard testimony from cultural observers, professors, and mental-health professionals that included William Bennett and the Archbishop of Denver, Reverend Charles J. Chaput
Charles J. Chaput
Charles Joseph Chaput, O.F.M. Cap. is an American prelate of the Catholic Church. He is the ninth and current Archbishop of Philadelphia, serving since his installation on September 8, 2011. He previously served as Archbishop of Denver and Bishop of Rapid City .Chaput is a professed Capuchin and...
. Participants criticized the band, its label-mate Nine Inch Nails
Nine Inch Nails
Nine Inch Nails is an American industrial rock project, founded in 1988 by Trent Reznor in Cleveland, Ohio. As its main producer, singer, songwriter, and instrumentalist, Reznor is the only official member of Nine Inch Nails and remains solely responsible for its direction...
, and the 1999 film The Matrix
The Matrix
The Matrix is a 1999 science fiction-action film written and directed by Larry and Andy Wachowski, starring Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss, Joe Pantoliano, and Hugo Weaving...
for their alleged contribution to the environment that made tragedies like Columbine possible. The committee requested that the Federal Trade Commission
Federal Trade Commission
The Federal Trade Commission is an independent agency of the United States government, established in 1914 by the Federal Trade Commission Act...
and the United States Department of Justice
United States Department of Justice
The United States Department of Justice , is the United States federal executive department responsible for the enforcement of the law and administration of justice, equivalent to the justice or interior ministries of other countries.The Department is led by the Attorney General, who is nominated...
investigate the entertainment industry's marketing practices to minors.
Following the conclusion of the European and Japanese festival leg of the tour on August 8, 1999, the band retreated from public view. The album's early development was marked by Manson's three-month seclusion at his home in the Hollywood Hills
Hollywood Hills
The Hollywood Hills is an affluent and exclusive neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, in the southeastern Santa Monica Mountains. It is bound by Laurel Canyon Boulevard to the west, Vermont Avenue to the east, Mulholland Drive to the north, and Sunset Boulevard to the south.-Hollywood Hills...
. The singer spent this time vacillating on how to respond to the accusations. He admitted that the maelstrom caused him to reconsider whether to continue pursuing his career: "[t]here was a bit of trepidation, [in] deciding, 'Is it worth it? Are people understanding what I'm trying to say? Am I even gonna be allowed to say it?' Because I definitely had every single door shut in my face ... there were not a lot of people who stood behind me." He told Alternative Press that he felt his safety was threatened, to the point where he "could be shot Mark David Chapman-style." Manson decided that it was less prudent for a controversial artist to allow his detractors to use his work (and entertainment in general) as a scapegoat, and began work on a new album as a more extensive counterattack.
Recording and production
Manson began writing material for the album as early as 1995, prior to the release of Antichrist Superstar. Initially the material consisted of loosely scattered ideas. Manson isolated himself in his attic, where the early material was worked into a usable shape. At the conclusion of Manson's three-month hiatus the band embarked on a year of writing and development of the material. Band members maintained a low profile; Manson stated that their official web siteMarilynManson.com
MarilynManson.com is the official Marilyn Manson website. The website, since its launch in 1998, has been integral to the promotion and direction of the band...
would "be my only contact with humanity."
The album is the group's most collaborative effort to date, with everyone contributing to the songwriting process, resulting in a more unified sound. Most of the effort was shared by Twiggy Ramirez, John 5, and Marilyn Manson; keyboardist Madonna Wayne Gacy
Madonna Wayne Gacy
Stephen Gregory Bier Jr., formerly known by his stage name Madonna Wayne Gacy is the former keyboard player for Marilyn Manson, 1989-2007. His stage name came from the names of the singer Madonna and the serial killer John Wayne Gacy...
provided input on the songs "President Dead" and "Cruci-Fiction in Space", while Ginger Fish
Ginger Fish
Kenneth Robert Wilson , better known by his stage name Ginger Fish, is an American drummer primarily known for playing drums for Marilyn Manson 1995-2011...
provided all of the drum work. Manson said that his songwriting sessions with John 5 were very focused; most of the songs were complete before being brought to the band for consideration, where they were enthusiastically received. In contrast, his sessions with Ramirez were far less rigorous, as the two experimented with absinthe
Absinthe
Absinthe is historically described as a distilled, highly alcoholic beverage. It is an anise-flavoured spirit derived from herbs, including the flowers and leaves of the herb Artemisia absinthium, commonly referred to as "grande wormwood", together with green anise and sweet fennel...
. During the process the band wrote a hundred pieces, of which 25 or 30 were developed into songs. Of these, 19 tracks were selected for the album.
Recording took place in several "undisclosed" locations, including Death Valley
Death Valley
Death Valley is a desert valley located in Eastern California. Situated within the Mojave Desert, it features the lowest, driest, and hottest locations in North America. Badwater, a basin located in Death Valley, is the specific location of the lowest elevation in North America at 282 feet below...
and Rick Rubin
Rick Rubin
Frederick Jay "Rick" Rubin is an American record producer and the co-president of Columbia Records. Along with Russell Simmons, Rubin was the co-founder of Def Jam Records and also established American Recordings...
's The Mansion Studio in Laurel Canyon. Locations were chosen for the atmosphere they were intended to impart to the music. Mix engineer
Mix engineer
A mix engineer, also referred to as "mixing engineer", is a person who, once all instruments, voices, and sounds, etc., have been recorded, creates what is called the final version of a song, hence the term "mix engineer"...
Dave Sardy
Dave Sardy
David Sardy is a Brooklyn born-and-raised composer, musician, songwriter, and record producer- Biography :...
co-produced the album with Manson. Bon Harris
Bon Harris
Bon Harris is an English composer, producer, singer/song writer, and multi-instrumentalist. He is a founding member of the quintessential British EBM group Nitzer Ebb, programming Nitzer Ebb's signature sound...
, of seminal Electronic body music
Electronic body music
Electronic body music or industrial dance is a music genre that combines elements of industrial music and electronic dance music...
group Nitzer Ebb
Nitzer Ebb
Nitzer Ebb is a British EBM group formed in 1982 by Essex school friends Vaughan "Bon" Harris , Douglas McCarthy , and David Gooday .-Band name:...
, supplied programming and pre-production editing. Manson announced on December 16, 1999, that the album was progressing under the working title
Working title
A working title, sometimes called a production title, is the temporary name of a product or project used during its development, usually used in filmmaking, television production, novel, video game, or music album.-Purpose:...
"In the Shadow of the Valley of Death" and would be represented by the alchemical symbol
Alchemical symbol
Alchemical symbols, originally devised as part of alchemy, were used to denote some elements and some compounds until the 18th century. Note that while notation like this was mostly standardized, style and symbol varied between alchemists, so this page lists the most common.-Three primes:According...
for Mercury.
The band's numerous excursions to Death Valley were undertaken to "imprint the feeling of the desert into [the band's] minds", in order to avoid composing songs that sounded artificial. Experimental recordings and "acoustic" songs were recorded using live instrumentation
Live instrumentation
In music, live instrumentation is the use of acoustic and electronic musical instruments in live music and recording rather than DJing, sampling, and other recording techniques....
. Manson later explained that the acoustic songs were only "acoustic" in the sense of not being produced electrically; the album's sonic landscape is fundamentally "electronic". Harris' programming skills proved instrumental, as the band recorded found and natural sounds, which he manipulated into new sonic elements.
The band rented recording time at The Mansion Studio, as its cavernous rooms are suitable for recording drums. The band found the space inspiring, and spent a lot of time there; they found they could accomplish more there than in the limited space of Manson's home studio. Ramirez later had blurry recollections of the sessions; he found there were "a lot of different emotions racing around [us]". The house, which once belong to escape artist
Escapology
For the Jessica Mauboy song, see Inescapable.Escapology is the practice of escaping from restraints or other traps. Escapologists escape from handcuffs, straitjackets, cages, coffins, steel boxes, barrels, bags, burning buildings, fish-tanks and other perils, often in combination.-History:The art...
Harry Houdini
Harry Houdini
Harry Houdini was a Hungarian-born American magician and escapologist, stunt performer, actor and film producer noted for his sensational escape acts...
, is rumored to be haunted. Gacy said that he spent the majority of his time working on a computer and synthesizer, "mess[ing] around with prime number loops where they only intersect every three days and I'd check up on what kind of music they'd be making. You never know what's going to happen." In contrast, Fish worked constantly; the bulk of his contributions to the recording process took place at The Mansion.
On February 23, 2000, Manson delivered a 20-minute lecture, via satellite, at a current events convention titled "DisinfoCon 2000
Disinfo
The Disinformation Company is a privately held, limited American publishing company that focuses in current affairs titles and seeks to expose disinformation. It is headquartered in New York City, New York...
", aimed at exposing and dispelling disinformation
Disinformation
Disinformation is intentionally false or inaccurate information that is spread deliberately. For this reason, it is synonymous with and sometimes called black propaganda. It is an act of deception and false statements to convince someone of untruth...
. Six days later the album was officially titled Holy Wood (In the Shadow of the Valley of Death). By April 12, 2000, the band had reached the final stages of recording, and Manson posted footage of the recording studio. In pre-release interviews he noted that the record would be "a very sharp pencil" that would appeal to Marilyn Manson fans.
Novel and film
Manson's ambitions for the project initially included a film of the same name which would explore the album's backstory. In July 1999 he had reportedly entered negotiations with New Line CinemaNew Line Cinema
New Line Cinema, often simply referred to as New Line, is an American film studio. It was founded in 1967 by Robert Shaye and Michael Lynne as a film distributor, later becoming an independent film studio. It became a subsidiary of Time Warner in 1996 and was merged with larger sister studio Warner...
to produce and distribute the film and its soundtrack. At the 1999 MTV Europe Music Awards in Dublin, Ireland, where the band was to perform on November 11, he revealed film's title and his projected production plans. He also met with Chilean avant-garde
Avant-garde
Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
film maker Alejandro Jodorowsky
Alejandro Jodorowsky
Alejandro Jodorowsky Prullansky, known as Alejandro Jodorowsky, is a Chilean filmmaker, playwright, actor, author, comic book writer and spiritual guru...
at the event to discuss the possibility of working on the film, although no final decision was made. By February 29, 2000, the deal had fallen through due to Manson's reservations that New Line Cinema was taking the film in a direction that would not have "retained his artistic vision."
Abandoning his attempt to bring Holy Wood to the big screen, Manson instead announced plans to put out two books to accompany the album. The first was a "graphic and phantasmagoric" novelized adaptation, intended to be released shortly after the record by ReganBooks
ReganBooks
ReganBooks was an American bestselling imprint or division of HarperCollins book publishing house , headed by editor and publisher Judith Regan, started in 1994 and ended in late 2006. During its existence, Regan was called, by LA Weekly, "the world's most successful publisher". The division...
, a division of HarperCollins
HarperCollins
HarperCollins is a publishing company owned by News Corporation. It is the combination of the publishers William Collins, Sons and Co Ltd, a British company, and Harper & Row, an American company, itself the result of an earlier merger of Harper & Brothers and Row, Peterson & Company. The worldwide...
. The style of the novel was inspired by the authors William S. Burroughs
William S. Burroughs
William Seward Burroughs II was an American novelist, poet, essayist and spoken word performer. A primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodernist author, he is considered to be "one of the most politically trenchant, culturally influential, and innovative artists of the 20th...
, Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. was a 20th century American writer. His works such as Cat's Cradle , Slaughterhouse-Five and Breakfast of Champions blend satire, gallows humor and science fiction. He was known for his humanist beliefs and was honorary president of the American Humanist Association.-Early...
, Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Leonard Huxley was an English writer and one of the most prominent members of the famous Huxley family. Best known for his novels including Brave New World and a wide-ranging output of essays, Huxley also edited the magazine Oxford Poetry, and published short stories, poetry, travel...
, and Philip K. Dick
Philip K. Dick
Philip Kindred Dick was an American novelist, short story writer and essayist whose published work is almost entirely in the science fiction genre. Dick explored sociological, political and metaphysical themes in novels dominated by monopolistic corporations, authoritarian governments and altered...
. It was to be followed by a coffee table book
Coffee table book
A coffee table book is a hardcover book that is intended to sit on a coffee table or similar surface in an area where guests sit and are entertained, thus inspiring conversation or alleviating boredom. They tend to be oversized and of heavy construction, since there is no pressing need for...
of images created for the project.
In an interview with Manson in December 2000 novelist Chuck Palahniuk
Chuck Palahniuk
Charles Michael "Chuck" Palahniuk is an American transgressional fiction novelist and freelance journalist. He is best known for the award-winning novel Fight Club, which was later made into a film directed by David Fincher and starring Brad Pitt, Edward Norton, and Helena Bonham Carter...
briefly mentioned the Holy Wood novel, and complimented its style. The book was due for release in the spring of 2001. Neither book has yet been released, allegedly due to a publishing dispute.
Concept
The album's plot is a "parable" that takes place in a thinly-veiled satire of modern America called "Holy Wood", which Manson has described as a Disneyesque amusement park the size of a city, where the main attraction is violence and sex. Its literary foilFoil (literature)
In fiction, a foil is a character who contrasts with another character in order to highlight particular qualities of another character....
is "Death Valley", which is used as "a metaphor for the outcast and the imperfect of the world."
The central character is its ill-fated protagonist "Adam Kadmon
Adam Kadmon
In the religious writings of Kabbalah, Adam Kadmon is a phrase meaning "Primal Man". The oldest rabbinical source for the term "Adam ha-Ḳadmoni" is Num. R. x., where Adam is styled, not as usually, "Ha-Rishon" , "Ha-Kadmoni" ....
", a figure borrowed from the Kabbalah
Kabbalah
Kabbalah/Kabala is a discipline and school of thought concerned with the esoteric aspect of Rabbinic Judaism. It was systematized in 11th-13th century Hachmei Provence and Spain, and again after the Expulsion from Spain, in 16th century Ottoman Palestine...
, in which he is described as the "Primal Man". In the similar Sufic and Alevi
Alevi
The Alevi are a religious and cultural community, primarily in Turkey, constituting probably more than 15 million people....
philosophies, he is described as the "Perfect or Complete Man"—an archetype for humanity. He undertakes a journey out of Death Valley and into Holy Wood. Idealistic and naïve, he attempts a subversive revolution through music.
While disenchanted when his revolution is consumed by Holy Wood's ideology of "Guns, God and Government", he is co-opted into their culture of death and fame, where celebrity worship, violence, and scapegoatism are held as the moral values of a religion rooted in martyrdom. In this religion dead celebrities are venerated into saints and President John F. "Jack" Kennedy
John F. Kennedy
John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy , often referred to by his initials JFK, was the 35th President of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963....
is idolized as the modern-day Christ.
This religion, called "Celebritarianism", is a deliberate parallel of Christianity. The intention is to critique the dead-celebrity phenomenon in American culture and the role that the Crucifixion of Jesus
Crucifixion of Jesus
The crucifixion of Jesus and his ensuing death is an event that occurred during the 1st century AD. Jesus, who Christians believe is the Son of God as well as the Messiah, was arrested, tried, and sentenced by Pontius Pilate to be scourged, and finally executed on a cross...
plays as its blueprint. This concept was extended to the worldwide Guns, God and Government Tour
Guns, God and Government Tour
Guns, God and Government was a worldwide arena tour by American rock band Marilyn Manson. It was the eighth tour the band embarked upon and the fourth to span over multiple legs. It was launched 17 days ahead in support of their fourth full-length studio LP, Holy Wood , which was released on...
that supported the album; the tour's logo was a rifle and handguns arranged to resemble the Christian cross.
Manson told Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...
that the storyline is semi-autobiographical. While it can be viewed on several levels, Manson states the simplest interpretation is to see it as a story about an angry youth whose revolution becomes commercialized, which leads him to "destroy the thing he has created, which is himself."
Themes
Violence is the central subject of the record. The material explores this theme by taking a critical look at America's cultural obsession with firearms, death, and fame, and its ramifications with respect to the Columbine tragedy. Manson sees the root causes of Columbine as gun cultureGun culture
The gun culture is a culture shared by people in the gun politics debate, generally those who advocate preserving gun rights and who are generally against more gun control...
, conservative American Christianity, and traditional family values. The album illustrates the harmful roles they play in the glorification and acceptance of wholesale violence in "mainstream" culture. In the album these factors are referred to by the slogan "Guns, God and Government." Seeing similarities between the tumultuous and culturally-defining Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
period of 1960s America and the 1990s, Manson draws numerous allegories to that decade and other events and figures in pop culture history. Music journalist Charlotte Robinson pointed out that it is difficult to assess the "narrative's effectiveness" without the book and film, and stated that "the album doesn't tell much of a story, instead presenting variations on the same themes."
Manson was drawn to The Beatles
The Beatles
The Beatles were an English rock band, active throughout the 1960s and one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Formed in Liverpool, by 1962 the group consisted of John Lennon , Paul McCartney , George Harrison and Ringo Starr...
' White Album
The Beatles (album)
The Beatles is the ninth official album by the English rock group The Beatles, a double album released in 1968. It is also commonly known as "The White Album" as it has no graphics or text other than the band's name embossed on its plain white sleeve.The album was written and recorded during a...
due to its purported role in the Charles Manson 'Family' murders and parallels he saw between that incident and Columbine. Manson said, "[It] had a lot of very subversive messages on it. Ones they intended and ones that may've been misinterpreted by [convicted mass murder conspirator] Charles Manson". It was the first piece of music to be blamed for inspiring violence: "When you've got 'Helter Skelter
Helter Skelter (Manson scenario)
The murders perpetrated by members of Charles Manson's "Family" were inspired in part by Manson's prediction of Helter Skelter, an apocalyptic war he believed would arise from tension over racial relations between blacks and whites...
' [taken from a Beatles song of the same name] written in blood on someone's wall, it's a little more damning than anything I've been blamed for." He appreciates the record's power, and it was inspirational towards his album's concept. Holy Wood, he said, "is a tribute to what that record did in history."
Several music reviewers also noted similarities between the anti-hero character of Adam Kadmon and Charles Manson. Marilyn Manson echoed this assessment, and described Holy Wood as a declaration of war on the entertainment industry, "their self-congratulatory attitude, their beliefs that they can never do wrong, ... that they're the center of the universe." He further articulated that "[i]n one way it's defending Hollywood, and in another way it's attacking it for not being brave enough."
A substantial amount of the record analyzes the cultural role of Jesus Christ and the iconography of his crucifixion as the origin of celebrity. The album appraises "our relationship with Christ, and how we outgrew that." He states that where in the past he critiqued religion, with this album accepts the story, and looks for things he could relate to. He discovered Christ was a revolutionary figure—a person who was killed for having dangerous opinions, and was later exploited and merchandised by the church. Manson notes the irony of "religious people who indict entertainment as being violent", because the crucifixion is a consummate icon of sex and violence which made Jesus "the first rock star". He feels that the exploitation of Christ as "the first celebrity" made religion the root of all entertainment.
Christ's death is compared to Abraham Zapruder
Abraham Zapruder
Abraham Zapruder was an American manufacturer of women's clothing. He was filming with a home-movie camera as U.S. President John F...
's film
Zapruder film
The Zapruder film is a silent, color motion picture sequence shot by private citizen Abraham Zapruder with a home-movie camera, asU.S. President John F...
of the JFK Assassination, which Manson observed as "the only thing that's happened in modern times to equal the crucifixion." He sarcastically described the historic home movie as a "good clip of mankind's generosity to share his violence with the world in such a cinematic way". Manson stresses the film's cultural importance and notes the irony of showing such violence on the news while complaining about violence in the entertainment industry. He watched the clip numerous times as a child, and finds it the most violent thing he had ever seen. Juxtaposing Christ and Kennedy, he posited,
Manson also cites John Lennon
John Lennon
John Winston Lennon, MBE was an English musician and singer-songwriter who rose to worldwide fame as one of the founding members of The Beatles, one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music...
as an assassination icon, and uses the album to criticize the news media's veneration of people into media martyrdom, and the tendency to turn death into spectacle to cater to the American public's appetite for violence, tragedy, and celebrity. He uses this to rebut claims that Marilyn Manson's music was responsible for Columbine. He wonders how the media would have covered the crucifixion, and linked these observations to Columbine during an interview on the O'Reilly Factor. Bill O'Reilly
Bill O'Reilly (political commentator)
William James "Bill" O'Reilly, Jr. is an American television host, author, syndicated columnist and political commentator. He is the host of the political commentary program The O'Reilly Factor on the Fox News Channel, which is the most watched cable news television program on American television...
argued that "disturbed kids" who lack direction from responsible parents could misinterpret the message of his music to be, in fact, an endorsement of the mentality that "when I'm dead [then] everybody's going to know me." Manson responded:
In spite of the many references to, and thematic fascination with, the three iconic men, Manson was reluctant to draw any comparison between them and himself, which he said would have amounted to pretentiousness. Instead he volunteered, "[w]hat I did find was parallels in their stories and my story, and I tried to maybe learn from their mistakes and what they tried to do ... You realise you can't change the world and you can only change yourself, and I think that's what [they] found out." He further added, "[f]or me it was about learning from that and trying to break the evolution of man [since] it's man's nature to be violent."
Composition
During pre-release interviews Manson stated that Holy Wood (In the Shadow of the Valley of Death) was intended to be the "industrialIndustrial music
Industrial music is a style of experimental music that draws on transgressive and provocative themes. The term was coined in the mid-1970s with the founding of Industrial Records by the band Throbbing Gristle, and the creation of the slogan "industrial music for industrial people". In general, the...
White Album ... in the sense that it's very experimental. I play a lot of keyboards, we switched things around, wrote in the desert ... it's experimental and when I think of experimental I think of The White Album." The 1969 Rolling Stones album Let It Bleed
Let It Bleed
Let It Bleed is the eighth British and tenth American album by English rock band The Rolling Stones, released in December 1969 by Decca Records in the United Kingdom and London Records in the United States...
, another source of inspiration, was written in the same house where he wrote Holy Wood.
Sonically, Manson said the record was "arrogant in an art rock
Art rock
Art rock is a subgenre of rock music that originated in the United Kingdom in the 1960s, with influences from art, avant-garde, and classical music. The first usage of the term, according to Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, was in 1968. Influenced by the work of The Beatles, most notably their Sgt...
sense", yet it turned out to be the "heaviest" record the band has done. "It needs to be to complete the trilogy," said Manson. The majority of the songs contain three or four parts, similar to art rock, due to the way that the story is told. The band took great care to avoid being "self-indulgent." Manson contended that the record is entertaining and pleasing. "Art rock is only self indulgent if it bores you." According to CMJ New Music Monthly
CMJ New Music Monthly
CMJ New Music Monthly was a monthly music magazine with interviews, reviews, and special features. Each issue included a compact disc with 15 to 24 songs by well established bands, unsigned bands, and everything in between...
, the songs are "angry and complex." Rolling Stone magazine noted that "on such songs as 'Target Audience', 'Disposable Teens' and 'Cruci-Fiction in Space', [the band] dismantles the slick, glam-tinged sound of [Mechanical] Animals in favor of the more brutal industrial-goth grind of his first [two] albums."
Similar to Antichrist Superstar, Holy Wood utilizes a compositional device called the song cycle
Song cycle
A song cycle is a group of songs designed to be performed in a sequence as a single entity. As a rule, all of the songs are by the same composer and often use words from the same poet or lyricist. Unification can be achieved by a narrative or a persona common to the songs, or even, as in Schumann's...
structure, which divides the record into four movements—A: In the Shadow, D: The Androgyne, A: Of Red Earth and M: The Fallen—to form the framework of Kadmon's story. The storyline unfolds in a multi-tiered progression of extended metaphors and allusions playing in Manson's psyche. For instance, the album's title was not just a reference to the Hollywood sign
Hollywood Sign
The Hollywood Sign is a landmark and American cultural icon in the Hollywood Hills area of Mount Lee, Santa Monica Mountains, in Los Angeles, California. The sign spells out the name of the area in and white letters. It was created as an advertisement in 1923, but garnered increasing recognition...
but also to "the tree of knowledge that Adam took the first fruit from when he fell out of paradise, the wood that Christ was crucified on, the wood that [Lee Harvey] Oswald's rifle is made from and the wood that so many coffins are made of."
"GodEatGod" follows Adam as he contemplates in the desert. "The Love Song" was written as an anthem for Holy Wood's religion of Celebritarianism. Manson explained the idea for the song comes from his observation that "Love Song" is one of the most common titles in music, but weaves in a metaphor about guns: "I was suggesting with the lyrics that the father is the hand, the mother is the gun, and the children are the bullets. Where you shoot them is your responsibility as parents." The chorus is a rhetorical take on an American bumper sticker, which asks: "Do you love your God, gun, government?"
UK music magazine Kerrang!
Kerrang!
Kerrang! is a UK-based magazine devoted to rock music published by Bauer Media Group. It was first published on June 6, 1981 as a one-off supplement in the Sounds newspaper...
described "The Fight Song" as a "playground punk anthem." Manson noted that the song's theme is Adam's desire to be a part of Holy Wood; the track is inherently autobiographical. Speaking broadly, it is about "a person who's grown up all his life thinking that the grass is greener on the other side, but when he finally [gets there], he realises that it's worse than where he came from and that it's truly exploitative." The line, "The death of one is a tragedy, the death of millions is just a statistic", relates to the disvaluation of the deaths of ordinary people who die every day, who are ignored by the media, compared to the frenzy that results in the press when someone dies in a more dramatic way.
"Disposable Teens" is a "signature Marilyn Manson song." Its bouncing guitar riff and teutonic staccato has its roots in former glam rock
Glam rock
Glam rock is a style of rock and pop music that developed in the UK in the early 1970s, which was performed by singers and musicians who wore outrageous clothes, makeup and hairstyles, particularly platform-soled boots and glitter...
er and convicted pedophile Gary Glitter
Gary Glitter
Gary Glitter is an English former glam rock singer-songwriter and musician.Glitter first came to prominence in the glam rock era of the early 1970s...
's song "Rock and Roll, Pt.2
Rock and Roll (Gary Glitter song)
"Rock and Roll", also known as "The Hey Song", is a song performed by British glam rocker Gary Glitter that was released in 1972 as a single and on the album Glitter. Co-written by Glitter and Mike Leander, the song is in two parts: Part 1 is a vocal track reflecting on the history of the genre,...
". Its lyrical themes tackle the disenfranchisement of contemporary youth, "particularly those that have been [brought up] to feel like accidents", with the revolutionary idealism of their parent's generation. The influence of The Beatles was critical in this song; the chorus echoes the disillusionment expressed in opening lines of their White Album song "Revolution 1
Revolution (song)
"Revolution" is a song by The Beatles written by John Lennon and credited to Lennon–McCartney. The Beatles released two distinct arrangements of the song in 1968: a hard rock version as the B-side of the single "Hey Jude", and a slower version titled "Revolution 1" on the eponymous album The Beatles...
". Here the sentiment was appropriated as a rallying cry for "disposable teens" against the shortcomings of "this so-called generation of revolutionaries", whom the song indicted: "You said you wanted evolution, the ape was a great big hit. You say want a revolution, man, and I say that you're full of shit." Manson singles out "Target Audience (Narcissus Narcosis)" as his favorite song on the record and that, to him, it related to every person's desire for self-actualization.
Borrowing a riff from English alternative rock
Alternative rock
Alternative rock is a genre of rock music and a term used to describe a diverse musical movement that emerged from the independent music underground of the 1980s and became widely popular by the 1990s...
band Radiohead
Radiohead
Radiohead are an English rock band from Abingdon, Oxfordshire, formed in 1985. The band consists of Thom Yorke , Jonny Greenwood , Ed O'Brien , Colin Greenwood and Phil Selway .Radiohead released their debut single "Creep" in 1992...
, "President Dead" is a guitar-driven song that showcases John 5's technical skills. The song opens with a vocal sample of Don Gardiner's ABC News Radio
ABC News Radio
ABC News Radio is the radio service of ABC News, a division of the ABC Television Network. Formerly known as ABC Radio News, ABC News Radio feeds, through Cumulus Media Networks, newscasts on the hour to its more than 2,000 affiliates...
broadcast of the death of John F. Kennedy, which is the track's subject matter. On another note, the song is 3:13 in length — a deliberate numerological reference to frame 313 of the Zapruder film, the frame of the fatal head shot, and the point where JFK became an American media martyr, "because the production value of his murder was so grand; the cinematography was so well done." "In the Shadow of the Valley of Death" is an introspective song where Adam is at his most emotionally vulnerable, to the point of wanting to give up. "Cruci-Fiction in Space" further delves into the Kennedy assassination, and concludes that human beings have evolved from monkeys to men and, finally, into guns. "A Place in the Dirt" is another personal song characterized by Adam's rumination and self-analysis of his place in Holy Wood.
"The Nobodies
The Nobodies (song)
"The Nobodies" is a song by American industrial rock band Marilyn Manson. It is the third and final single from their fourth studio album, Holy Wood , released in 2001....
" is a mournful, elegiac dirge that begins with a synth-drum and harpsichord introduction
Introduction (music)
In music, the introduction is a passage or section which opens a movement or a separate piece. In popular music this is often abbreviated as intro...
. The verse "today I'm dirty and I want to be pretty, tomorrow I know I'm just dirt" is sung with an Iggy Pop
Iggy Pop
Iggy Pop is an American singer, songwriter, musician, and actor. Though considered an innovator of punk rock, Pop's music has encompassed a number of styles over the years, including pop, metal, jazz and blues...
-style vocal delivery that builds to the adrenaline-fuelled chorus of "we are the nobodies, we wanna be somebodies, when we're dead they'll know just who we are. Some children died the other day, we fed machines and then we prayed, puked up and down in morbid faith, you should have seen the ratings that day." CMJ
College Music Journal
College Music Journal, commonly known as CMJ, is a music events/publishing company which hosts an annual festival in New York City, the CMJ Music Marathon, as well as a weekly magazine of and for the music industry and college radio stations in the United States and Canada. It publishes top 30...
noted that the song was likely to be interpreted by some people as a tribute to the perpetrators of Columbine, but that its point was not to glorify violence; rather, it was to depict a society drenched in its children's blood. "The Death Song" is the turning point for Adam; he no longer cares. Manson described it as being sarcastic and nihilistic: "it's like 'We have no future and we don't give a fuck'." Kerrang! described it as among the album's "heaviest" songs.
In "Lamb of God", Manson uses the examples of the assassinations of Jesus Christ, JFK, and John Lennon to criticize his accusers. He illustrates their hunger for venerating dead people into martyrs and superstars, and for turning tragedy into televised spectacle. The bridge paraphrases the chorus of "Across the Universe
Across the Universe
"Across the Universe" is a song by the English group The Beatles. It was written by John Lennon, and credited to Lennon–McCartney. The song first appeared on the various artists charity compilation album No One's Gonna Change Our World in December 1969, and later, in different form, on Let It Be,...
". Manson notes that even though John Lennon sang that "nothing's going to change my world", "[Lennon's killer] Mark David Chapman came along and proved him very wrong. That was always something, growing up, that was very sad and tragic to me—a song that I always identified with." "Burning Flag" is a heavy metal song that recalls the sound of American industrial metal band Ministry
Ministry (band)
Ministry is an American industrial metal band founded by lead singer Al Jourgensen in 1981. Originally a synthpop outfit, Ministry changed its style to industrial metal in the late 1980s. Ministry found mainstream success in the early 1990s with its most successful album Psalm 69: The Way to...
. Lennon's "Working Class Hero
Working Class Hero
"Working Class Hero" is a song from John Lennon's first post-Beatles solo album, 1970's John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band.-Theme:The song is a take on the class split of the 1940s and 1950s, and of the 1960s in which he was famous. The song appears to tell the story of someone growing up in the working...
" was covered in the period between the band's August 30, 2000, appearance at the Kerrang! Awards and the November 14, 2000, launch of the album. In describing Lennon's idealism and influence, Manson said that "some of Lennon's Communist sentiments in his music later in his life were very dangerous. I think he died because of it. I don't think his death was any sort of accident. Aside from that, I think he's one of my favorite songwriters of all time."
Promotion
After announcing that it would be his only mode of contact with the outside world, Manson regularly posted updates about the then-nascent album on the band's website to generate interest and anticipation among fans. Promotion began as early as June 9, 1999, with an update stating that he was writing early compositions for a new album in tandem with an original screenplay. On December 16, 1999, he posted a four-minute video clip, accompanied by a written address, which elaborated on the upcoming album's themes, and featured excerpts of the band performing two new songs. The first cut was a rock song that later became the single "Disposable Teens", while the second cut was a rough demoDemo (music)
A demo version or demo of a song is one recorded for reference rather than for release. A demo is a way for a musician to approximate their ideas on tape or disc, and provide an example of those ideas to record labels, producers or other artists...
cover of the ballad "Little Child" (otherwise known as "Mommy Dear"). He described the album as "the most violent yet beautiful creation we have accomplished. This is a soundtrack for a world that is being sold to kids and then being destroyed by them. But maybe that's exactly what it deserves." An acoustic version of the song "Sick City", from Charles Manson's 1970 album Lie: The Love and Terror Cult, later appeared on February 14, 2000. The song was not intended to be included in either the upcoming album or the Holy Wood feature film.
On April 12, 2000, Manson wrote that they were completing the final stages of recording, and posted a downloadable silent movie that documented the process. This was followed on August 9, 2000, with a posting of the cover of the Holy Wood novel and a sound clip of "The Love Song" the next day. On August 25, 2000, he released three tracks, "Burning Flag", "Cruci-Fiction in Space", and "The Love Song", for digital download on their website. He traveled to the UK to perform "Disposable Teens" on the October 12, 2000, episode of BBC One
BBC One
BBC One is the flagship television channel of the British Broadcasting Corporation in the United Kingdom. It was launched on 2 November 1936 as the BBC Television Service, and was the world's first regular television service with a high level of image resolution...
's Top of the Pops
Top of the Pops
Top of the Pops, also known as TOTP, is a British music chart television programme, made by the BBC and originally broadcast weekly from 1 January 1964 to 30 July 2006. After 25 December 2006 it became a radio program, now hosted by Tony Blackburn...
. On October 27, 2000, the band launched the worldwide Guns, God and Government Tour. Video footage and photographs from the inaugural show at the Minneapolis Orpheum Theatre and Milwaukee Eagles Ballroom were posted on the band's website on November 2, 2000, which showed them performing "Disposable Teens" and "The Fight Song".
From November 1 to November 13, 2000, the UK division of Nothing/Interscope Records held a contest to promote the album and the launch of the UK version of the band's official website. The contest invited fans to log on the site daily to pick up a series of coded clues which led to a message linked to the album. Fans who solved the riddle received an exclusive download and were entered into a draw to win a week-long trip for two to meet the frontman in Hollywood, California.
In mid 2001 Universal Music Group
Universal Music Group
Universal Music Group is an American music group, the largest of the "big four" record companies by its commanding market share and its multitude of global operations...
received criticism for airing commercials which promoted the album on MTV
MTV
MTV, formerly an initialism of Music Television, is an American network based in New York City that launched on August 1, 1981. The original purpose of the channel was to play music videos guided by on-air hosts known as VJs....
's Total Request Live
Total Request Live
Total Request Live is a television series on MTV that featured popular music videos. TRL was MTV's prime outlet for music videos as the network continues to concentrate on reality-based programming. In addition to music videos, TRL featured daily guests...
. Manson voiced suspicion that former Democratic vice presidential candidate
2000 Democratic National Convention
The 2000 Democratic National Convention was a quadrennial presidential nominating convention for the Democratic Party. The convention nominated Vice President Al Gore as its candidate for President and Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman as its candidate for Vice President. The convention was held at...
Senator Joseph Lieberman had a part in its orchestration. At the time the Senator had just introduced a bill to the United States Congress called The Media Marketing Accountability Act, which sought to levy criminal penalties against entertainment industry distributors who market violent and sexually explicit media to minors. The proposed legislation stemmed from the publication of the Federal Trade Commission
Federal Trade Commission
The Federal Trade Commission is an independent agency of the United States government, established in 1914 by the Federal Trade Commission Act...
investigation he, along with senators Brownback and Hatch, had requested from then-US President Bill Clinton
Bill Clinton
William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton is an American politician who served as the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Inaugurated at age 46, he was the third-youngest president. He took office at the end of the Cold War, and was the first president of the baby boomer generation...
at the May 4, 1999, Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation hearing on entertainment industry marketing practices to minors.
Release
On February 29, 2000, Manson confirmed that the album was on track for a "Fall of 2000" release. By August 2, the singer announced a new projected release date of October 24 and posted an early draft of the track listing. Manson then began posting weekly updates on the website so fans could get access to previews of new songs and artwork legally and with the permission of the band. On August 25, 2000, the complete track listing for the new album was released.On September 18, 2000, Manson clarified that the album's US release was moved to November 14, 2000, and confirmed that the album's first single would be "Disposable Teens". The postponement was the result of further fine-tuning work being done during the final mixing stage. The album was released on November 13, 2000, in the UK and on December 5, 2000, in Japan, through Nothing and Interscope Records.
On the evening of November 14, 2000, Manson, Ramirez, and John 5 took a short break from the tour to celebrate the album's launch by playing a brief invitation-only acoustic set at the Saci nightclub in New York City. Tickets for the event were given away through radio contests, via the band's website, and by being among the first 100 to buy the album at the Tower Records
Tower Records
Tower Records was a retail music chain that was based in Sacramento, California. It currently exists as an international franchise and an online music store....
store in New York's Broadway Avenue. The set consisted of four songs that included a cover of Lennon's "Working Class Hero" and "Suicide Is Painless
Suicide Is Painless
"Suicide Is Painless" is a song written by Johnny Mandel and Mike Altman , which is best known for being featured as the theme song for both the movie and TV series M*A*S*H. The actual title is "Song from M*A*S*H" ". Mike Altman is the son of the original film's director, Robert Altman, and was 14...
", the theme song for the TV series M*A*S*H. Manson noted that the latter song "[was] far more depressing than anything I could have ever written." The following day he appeared on Total Request Live for a segment titled "Mothers Against Marilyn Manson". The band performed the first single at MTV's New Year's Eve celebration, along with a cover of Cheap Trick
Cheap Trick
Cheap Trick is an American rock band from Rockford, Illinois, formed in 1973. The band consists of members Robin Zander , Rick Nielsen , Tom Petersson , and Bun E...
's "Surrender
Surrender (Cheap Trick song)
"Surrender" is a single by Cheap Trick released in June 1978 from the album Heaven Tonight. It was the first Cheap Trick single to enter the Billboard Hot 100 chart, peaking at number 62...
", and again on January 8, 2001, at the 2001 American Music Awards
American Music Awards of 2001
The 28th Annual American Music Awards were held on January 8, 2001.-Pop/Rock Category:-Soul/R&B Category:-Country Category:-Adult Contemporary Category:-Rap/Hip-Hop Category:-Alternative Category:-Latin Category:-Soundtrack Category:...
.
Singles
Holy Wood (In the Shadow of the Valley of Death) was anchored by three singles. The first two were each released in three versions. The first single, "Disposable Teens", debuted as a music video directed by Samuel BayerSamuel Bayer
Samuel David Bayer is an American commercial, music video and film director, and cinematographer.-Early life:Bayer was born in Syracuse, New York...
on Total Request Live on October 25, 2000. In the following weeks the single was released as two standalone single EP
Extended play
An EP is a musical recording which contains more music than a single, but is too short to qualify as a full album or LP. The term EP originally referred only to specific types of vinyl records other than 78 rpm standard play records and LP records, but it is now applied to mid-length Compact...
s. The first version, titled "Disposable Teens Pt.1", was released on November 6, 2000, in the UK, and features Manson's cover of "Working Class Hero". It was released as a maxi single
Maxi single
A maxi single or maxi-single is a music single release with more than the usual two tracks of an a-side song and a b-side song.-The first maxi singles:...
in the UK on August 21, 2002. The second version, titled "Disposable Teens Pt.2", followed on November 14, 2000, and features a cover of "Five to One
Five To One
"Five to One" is a song by The Doors, from their 1968 album Waiting for the Sun.-Origin:"Five to one" is rumored to be the approximate ratio of whites to blacks, old to young, or non-pot smokers to pot smokers in the US in 1967, depending on whom you ask. A further urban legend has it as the ratio...
" by The Doors
The Doors
The Doors were an American rock band formed in 1965 in Los Angeles, California, with vocalist Jim Morrison, keyboardist Ray Manzarek, drummer John Densmore, and guitarist Robby Krieger...
. This version was released in the UK as a maxi single and as a 12" picture disc vinyl EP on October 31, 2000, and on November 6, 2000, respectively.
The second single, "The Fight Song", was also released in three versions. The first version, titled "The Fight Song Pt.1", was released on January 29, 2001, in the US and on February 19, 2001, in the UK. "The Fight Song Pt.1" was released as a 12" picture disc vinyl EP on February 19, 2001, in the UK. Both feature a remix
Remix
A remix is an alternative version of a recorded song, made from an original version. This term is also used for any alterations of media other than song ....
by Joey Jordison
Joey Jordison
Joey Jordison , is an American musician, songwriter, and record producer, best known for his work as the drummer for the nu metal band Slipknot. He grew up in Waukee, Iowa with his parents and two sisters, and was given his first drum kit at the age of 8...
of the heavy metal
Heavy metal music
Heavy metal is a genre of rock music that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s, largely in the Midlands of the United Kingdom and the United States...
band Slipknot
Slipknot (band)
Slipknot is an American heavy metal band from Des Moines, Iowa. Formed in 1995, the group was founded by percussionist Shawn Crahan and bassist Paul Gray...
. The second version, titled "The Fight Song Pt.2", was released on February 2, 2001, in the US and on March 6, 2001, in the UK. The music video was directed by W.I.Z.
W.I.Z.
W.I.Z. is a music video director from the United Kingdom.-Background:W.I.Z. has directed a number of high-concept videos for major music artists from the United Kingdom and the United States, including Massive Attack, Kasabian, Oasis and Marilyn Manson...
. It generated minor controversy for its violent depiction of an American football
American football
American football is a sport played between two teams of eleven with the objective of scoring points by advancing the ball into the opposing team's end zone. Known in the United States simply as football, it may also be referred to informally as gridiron football. The ball can be advanced by...
game between jocks and goths
Goth subculture
The goth subculture is a contemporary subculture found in many countries. It began in England during the early 1980s in the gothic rock scene, an offshoot of the post-punk genre. The goth subculture has survived much longer than others of the same era, and has continued to diversify...
, which some sources interpreted to be an exploitation of the Columbine tragedy. Manson dismissed these claims as media hype, adding that "Flak
Criticism
Criticism is the judgement of the merits and faults of the work or actions of an individual or group by another . To criticize does not necessarily imply to find fault, but the word is often taken to mean the simple expression of an objection against prejudice, or a disapproval.Another meaning of...
is my job."
As early as February 10, 2001, Manson indicated that the "The Nobodies" would be the album's third single. The music video, directed by Paul Fedor, premiered on MTV in June 2001. Originally Manson wanted to film the music video in Russia "because the atmosphere, the desolation, the coldness and the architecture would really suit the song." Another early plan was to incorporate the MTV stunt and prank TV series Jackass
Jackass (TV series)
jackass is an American reality series, originally shown on MTV from 2000 to 2002, featuring people performing various dangerous, crude, ridiculous, self-injuring stunts and pranks...
, due to the song's inclusion in the show's soundtrack. However, this idea was abandoned after the show drew the ire of Senator Joseph Lieberman. The third single was released in physical format on September 3, 2001, in the UK and, on October 6, 2001, in the US. A remixed version of the song later appeared in the 2001 Johnny Depp
Johnny Depp
John Christopher "Johnny" Depp II is an American actor, producer and musician. He has won the Golden Globe Award and Screen Actors Guild award for Best Actor. Depp rose to prominence on the 1980s television series 21 Jump Street, becoming a teen idol...
film From Hell
From Hell (film)
From Hell is a 2001 American crime drama horror mystery film directed by the Hughes brothers. It is an adaptation of the comic book series of the same name by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell about the Jack the Ripper murders.-Plot:...
.
Cover and packaging
The album artwork was designed by P. R. BrownP. R. Brown
Paul R. Brown is a graphic designer, photographer, and music video director.In 1996 he founded Bau-da Design Lab, which currently operates out of Los Angeles and New York. P.R. Brown is well-known for his album designs for musicians such as Mötley Crüe, Korn, Godsmack, and early in his career he...
and Marilyn Manson. Manson began conceptualizing it as he was writing the songs, and Brown and Manson worked in tandem to realize the imagery after they decided to do the work themselves. It contains many elements from alchemy
Alchemy
Alchemy is an influential philosophical tradition whose early practitioners’ claims to profound powers were known from antiquity. The defining objectives of alchemy are varied; these include the creation of the fabled philosopher's stone possessing powers including the capability of turning base...
and the tarot
Tarot
The tarot |trionfi]] and later as tarocchi, tarock, and others) is a pack of cards , used from the mid-15th century in various parts of Europe to play a group of card games such as Italian tarocchini and French tarot...
.
The album uses the symbol of the planet Mercury, commonly used in alchemy, as an identifying logo. Expanding on its relationship with the album's concept, he stated, "It represents both the androgyne
Adam Kadmon
In the religious writings of Kabbalah, Adam Kadmon is a phrase meaning "Primal Man". The oldest rabbinical source for the term "Adam ha-Ḳadmoni" is Num. R. x., where Adam is styled, not as usually, "Ha-Rishon" , "Ha-Kadmoni" ....
and the prima materia
Chaos (cosmogony)
Chaos refers to the formless or void state preceding the creation of the universe or cosmos in the Greek creation myths, more specifically the initial "gap" created by the original separation of heaven and earth....
, which has been associated with Adam, the first man."
Manson commissioned a redesigned set of fourteen Major Arcana
Major Arcana
The Major Arcana or trumps are a suit of twenty-two cards in the tarot deck. They serve as a permanent trump suit in games played with the tarot deck, and are distinguished from the four standard suits collectively known as the Minor Arcana...
tarot cards, based on the Rider-Waite deck
Rider-Waite tarot deck
The Rider-Waite tarot deck is the most popular Tarot deck in use today in the English-speaking world . Other suggested names for this include the Rider-Waite-Smith, Waite-Smith, Waite-Colman Smith or simply the Rider deck...
. He explained that his interest in tarot was grounded in an attraction to the symbolism rather than the idea of divination. The cards depict each member of the band in a surrealistic
Surrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....
tableaux. Each was reinterpreted to reflect the iconography of the album. For instance, The Emperor
The Emperor (Tarot card)
The Emperor is the fourth trump or Major Arcana card in traditional Tarot decks. It is used in game playing as well as in divination.- Description and symbolism :...
is shown with prosthetic legs and clutching a rifle while sitting in a wheelchair in front of an American flag; The Fool
The Fool (Tarot card)
The Fool or The Jester is one of the 78 cards in a Tarot deck; one of the 22 Trump cards that make up the Major Arcana. The Fool is unnumbered...
is depicted walking off a cliff, with grainy images of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis
Jacqueline Lee Bouvier "Jackie" Kennedy Onassis was the wife of the 35th President of the United States, John F. Kennedy, and served as First Lady of the United States during his presidency from 1961 until his assassination in 1963. Five years later she married Greek shipping magnate Aristotle...
and a JFK campaign poster in the background; and Justice
Justice (Tarot card)
Justice is a Major Arcana Tarot card, numbered either VIII or XI, depending on the deck. This card is used in game playing as well as in divination.- Description :...
weighs The Bible against the Brain. The album's inner sleeve contains nine of these cards: The Magician
The Magician (Tarot card)
The Magician, The Magus, or The Juggler is the first trump or Major Arcana card in most traditional Tarot decks. It is used in game playing as well as in divination...
, The Devil
The Devil (Tarot card)
The Devil is the fifteenth trump or Major Arcana card in most traditional Tarot decks. It is used in game playing as well as in divination.- Symbolism :...
, The Emperor, The Hermit
The Hermit
The Hermit is the ninth trump or Major Arcana card in most traditional Tarot decks. It is used in game playing as well as in divination.- Description :A. E. Waite was a key figure in the development of modern Tarot interpretations...
, The Fool, Justice, The High Priestess
The High Priestess
The High Priestess is the second trump or Major Arcana card in most traditional Tarot decks. This card is used in game playing as well as in divination. In the first Tarot pack with inscriptions, the 18th-century woodcut Marseilles Tarot, this figure is crowned with the Papal tiara and labelled La...
, Death
Death (Tarot card)
Death is the thirteenth trump or Major Arcana card in most traditional Tarot decks.It is used in Tarot, tarock and tarocchi games as well as in divination.-Description:...
, and The Hierophant
The Hierophant
The Hierophant , in some decks named The Pope, is the fifth trump or Major Arcana card in most traditional Tarot decks. It is used in game playing as well as in divination.-Description and symbolism:...
. The remaining extant cards include The Star
The Star (Tarot card)
The Star is the seventeenth trump or Major Arcana card in most traditional Tarot decks. It is used in game playing as well as in divination.- Description :...
, The World
The World (Tarot card)
The World is a trump or Major Arcana card in the tarot deck. It is usually the final card of the Major Arcana or tarot trump sequence. In the tarot family of card games, this card is usually worth five points.- Description :...
, The Tower
The Tower (Tarot card)
The Tower is the sixteenth trump or Major Arcana card in most cartomancy Tarot decks. It is not used as part of any game.- History :...
, and The Hanged Man.
The cover art, which portrays Manson as a crucified Jesus Christ with a torn-off mandible, is intended as a criticism of censorship and America's obsession with media martyrs. It is a cropped version of the reinterpreted Hanged Man card. Beneath it is an obscured copy of the coroner's report of John F. Kennedy, showing the words "clinical record" and "autopsy". The Marilyn Manson typeface uses the same font as the Disney World
Walt Disney World Resort
Walt Disney World Resort , is the world's most-visited entertaimental resort. Located in Lake Buena Vista, Florida ; approximately southwest of Orlando, Florida, United States, the resort covers an area of and includes four theme parks, two water parks, 23 on-site themed resort hotels Walt...
logo of the 1960s. Manson explained the cover further: "I think it's more offensive to Christians for me to say, 'I believe in the story of Christ and I enjoy the images that you present, but for different reasons than you'. I've taken my own interpretation, that's more offensive than Antichrist Superstar, and just completely disvaluing it. I'm going to turn a bunch of kids onto Christianity in my own sick, twisted way."
The cover generated controversy upon release. Some copies were issued with a cardboard sleeve featuring an alternative cover, as some retailers refused to stock the album with the original artwork. A pastor in Memphis, Tennessee, threatened to go on hunger strike
Hunger strike
A hunger strike is a method of non-violent resistance or pressure in which participants fast as an act of political protest, or to provoke feelings of guilt in others, usually with the objective to achieve a specific goal, such as a policy change. Most hunger strikers will take liquids but not...
unless the record was pulled from the shelves. Manson described these actions as attempts at censorship and stated that, "the irony is that my point of the photo on the album was to show people that the crucifixion of Christ is, indeed, a violent image. My jaw is missing as a symbol of this very kind of censorship. This doesn't piss me off as much as it pleases me, because those offended by my album cover have successfully proven my point." Gigwise
Gigwise.com
Gigwise.com is an online music magazine that features music news, photos, album reviews, music festivals, concert tickets, and a community forum. Founded in 2001, the magazine is based in the United Kingdom....
ranked the cover 16th on their list of 'The 50 Most Controversial Album Covers Of All Time!'.
Formats
Holy Wood (In the Shadow of the Valley of Death) was released in three physical formats. The standard jewel case CD release contains a single Enhanced CDEnhanced CD
Enhanced CD, also known as CD Extra and CD Plus, is a certification mark of the Recording Industry Association of America for various technologies that combine audio and computer data for use in both Compact Disc and CD-ROM players....
, a gatefold
Gatefold
A gatefold is a type of fold used for advertising around a magazine or section, and for packaging of media such as vinyl records.- LP covers :...
booklet, and a card stock outer slipcase. The limited UK edition CD features a bonus track acoustic version of "The Nobodies", while the limited Japanese edition CD contains the UK bonus track and a live rendition of the song "Mechanical Animals" as bonus material. Universal Music Japan
Universal Music Group
Universal Music Group is an American music group, the largest of the "big four" record companies by its commanding market share and its multitude of global operations...
released an Original Recording Remastered
Remaster
Remaster is a word marketed mostly in the digital audio age, although the remastering process has existed since recording began...
version of the album in Super High Material CD (SHM-CD) on December 3, 2008, and a limited edition 10th-anniversary commemorative reissue in 2010. The LP vinyl release was pressed on two black discs contained in a gatefold paperboard slipcase. The Compact Cassette
Compact Cassette
The Compact Cassette, often referred to as audio cassette, cassette tape, cassette, or simply tape, is a magnetic tape sound recording format. It was designed originally for dictation, but improvements in fidelity led the Compact Cassette to supplant the Stereo 8-track cartridge and reel-to-reel...
release contained a single cassette tape, a gatefold booklet, and a card stock outer slipcase. Amazon.com
Amazon MP3
Amazon MP3 is an online music store owned and operated by Amazon.com. Launched in public beta on September 25, 2007, in January 2008 it became the first music store to sell music without digital rights management from the four major music labels , as well as many independents...
has offered a digital version in MP3
MP3
MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III, more commonly referred to as MP3, is a patented digital audio encoding format using a form of lossy data compression...
format since November 14, 2000.
Critical reception
Holy Wood received mixed to positive reviews from most music critics. At MetacriticMetacritic
Metacritic.com is a website that collates reviews of music albums, games, movies, TV shows and DVDs. For each product, a numerical score from each review is obtained and the total is averaged. An excerpt of each review is provided along with a hyperlink to the source. Three colour codes of Green,...
, which assigns a normalized
Standard score
In statistics, a standard score indicates how many standard deviations an observation or datum is above or below the mean. It is a dimensionless quantity derived by subtracting the population mean from an individual raw score and then dividing the difference by the population standard deviation...
rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average
Weighted mean
The weighted mean is similar to an arithmetic mean , where instead of each of the data points contributing equally to the final average, some data points contribute more than others...
score of 72 based on 14 reviews, which indicates "generally favorable reviews." Stephen Thomas Erlewine
Stephen Thomas Erlewine
Stephen Thomas Erlewine is a senior editor for Allmusic. He is the author of many artist biographies and record reviews for Allmusic, as well as a freelance writer, occasionally contributing liner notes. He is also frontman and guitarist for the Ann Arbor-based band Who Dat?Erlewine is the nephew...
of allmusic praised it as "the definitive Marilyn Manson album, since it's tuneful and abrasive." He specifically complimented the band for "figur[ing] out [how] to meld the hooks and subtle sonic shading of Mechanical Animals with the ugly, neo-industrial metallicisms of Antichrist [Superstar]" and said that "much of its charm lies in Manson trying so hard, perfecting details ... there's so much effort, Holy Wood winds up a stronger and more consistent album than any of his other work. If there's any problem, it's that Manson's shock rock seems a little quaint in 2000 ... [However,] it's to Warner's [frontman Marilyn Manson] credit as, yes, an artist that Holy Wood works anyway."
Barry Walters of Rolling Stone said, "The band truly rocks: Its malevolent groove fleshes out its leader's usual complaints with an exhilarating swagger that's the essence of rock and roll." LA Weekly
LA Weekly
LA Weekly is a free weekly tabloid-sized "alternative weekly" in Los Angeles, California. It was founded in 1978 by Editor/Publisher Jay Levin and a board of directors that included actor-producer Michael Douglas...
was similarly impressed, and pointed out that "almost all [the songs] contain a double-take chord change or a textural overdose or a mind-blowing bridge, and they'll be terroristic in concert." Revolver magazine
Revolver (magazine)
Revolver is a bi-monthly rock and heavy metal magazine published by Future US. Before covering heavy metal, rock & hard rock solely, it was a more mainstream oriented magazine. The magazine is structured in a manner similar to publications such as Spin while covering many avenues within the heavy...
editor Christopher Scapelliti was most impressed by the record's earnestness, and stated that "For all Holy Wood's well-tempered melodies and drunken pandemonium, what comes across loudest on the album is not the music but the sense of injury expressed in Manson's lyrics. Like Plastic Ono Band, John Lennon's bare-boned solo debut, Holy Wood screams with a primal fury that's evident even in its quietest moments." According to Billboard
Billboard (magazine)
Billboard is a weekly American magazine devoted to the music industry, and is one of the oldest trade magazines in the world. It maintains several internationally recognized music charts that track the most popular songs and albums in various categories on a weekly basis...
magazine, the album proved that Manson is "one of the most skilled lyricists in rock today."
Other critics found shortcomings with the album. Drowned in Sound
Drowned in Sound
DrownedinSound.com or DiS is a UK based music webzine financed by artist management company Silentway . The site is an editorially independent music website.-History:...
, which assigns a normalized rating out of 10, gave the album a score of 10. They noted, however, "There [are] a number of criticisms that could come Marilyn Manson's way: too much more of the same, too much philosophical posing, too much sloganeering. Regardless, all this needs to attain perfection is a few minutes shaved off of the overall running time ... [and] lyrically it actually says something intelligent for once and musically it has a lot more variation and scope than the Limp Bizkit
Limp Bizkit
Limp Bizkit is an American rock band from Jacksonville, Florida. Formed in 1995, the group's lineup consists of Fred Durst , Wes Borland , Sam Rivers , John Otto and DJ Lethal . The band achieved mainstream success with their second studio album Significant Other, released in 1999...
s of the world." PopMatters
PopMatters
PopMatters is an international webzine of cultural criticism that covers many aspects of popular culture. PopMatters publishes reviews, interviews, and detailed essays on most cultural products and expressions in areas such as music, television, films, books, video games, comics, sports, theater,...
agreed and stated, "The central flaw of Holy Wood is that the power of its message, an important and provocative one, is watered down by its artistic pretensions. While Holy Wood is often affecting, it would be a better album if it was shorter and dealt with its subject matter directly, instead of through the veil of the 'concept album'." Robert Hilburn
Robert Hilburn
Robert Hilburn is a pop music critic and author. As critic and music editor of the Los Angeles Times from 1970 to 2005, his reviews, essays and profiles have appeared in hundreds of publications around the world...
of the Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
was also disappointed that Holy Wood did not live up to "the promise of Mechanical Animals." In contrast to Erlewine, he viewed the musical cross-pollination of Antichrist Superstar and Mechanical Animals as confusion on the band's part on "where to turn [musically], as if uncertain which is the right move commercially in a rock world taken over by Limp Bizkit and Eminem
Eminem
Marshall Bruce Mathers III , better known by his stage name Eminem or his alter ego Slim Shady, is an American rapper, record producer, songwriter and actor. Eminem's popularity brought his group project, D12, to mainstream recognition...
." He concluded that "[t]his is music that sounds reasonable on the radio but crumbles under scrutiny."
Joshua Klein of The A.V. Club
The A.V. Club
The A.V. Club is an entertainment newspaper and website published by The Onion. Its features include reviews of new films, music, television, books, games and DVDs, as well as interviews and other regular offerings examining both new and classic media and other elements of pop culture. Unlike its...
found himself wholly unconvinced, and remarked that "[this] sort of agitprop
Agitprop
Agitprop is derived from agitation and propaganda, and describes stage plays, pamphlets, motion pictures and other art forms with an explicitly political message....
is thoroughly predictable, and the only thing that could prove shocking about Manson's antics would be if the singer actually evinced any power over his followers. Here, he seems entranced by his own power, which may be why his dark worldview sounds baseless even as he offers sharp hooks others would kill for."
Commercial performance
Since early critical appraisal of Holy Wood was far less favorable than the band's previous effort, Mechanical Animals, many critics and retailers questioned if the band still carried appeal in the music scene of the early 2000s. Best BuyBest Buy
Best Buy Co., Inc. is an American specialty retailer of consumer electronics in the United States, accounting for 19% of the market. It also operates in Mexico, Canada & China. The company's subsidiaries include Geek Squad, CinemaNow, Magnolia Audio Video, Pacific Sales, and, in Canada operates...
's sales projections in 2000 estimated its first week sales would be around 150,000 units nationally, significantly less than the 223,000 units sold by Mechanical Animals in its first week. In the US, the album debuted and peaked at № 13 on the Billboard 200
Billboard 200
The Billboard 200 is a ranking of the 200 highest-selling music albums and EPs in the United States, published weekly by Billboard magazine. It is frequently used to convey the popularity of an artist or groups of artists...
, with first week sales of 117,000, initially making it a commercial disappointment.
The record only spent a total of 13 consecutive weeks on the charts before exiting completely on March 3, 2001, making it the shortest-charting full-length LP offering by the band until The High End of Low
The High End of Low
The High End of Low is the seventh full-length studio album by American rock band Marilyn Manson. Sean Beavan, who mixed Antichrist Superstar, Mechanical Animals, and Eat Me, Drink Me, is co-producer of the album along with Chris Vrenna...
(2009). It was completely overshadowed by its sister albums, Antichrist Superstar and Mechanical Animals, which spent 52 and 33 weeks on the charts, respectively. The album's sales figures were equally dismal, and it took the record three years to attain a gold certification from the RIAA, in March 2003, for shipments of over 500,000 units. However, in four other countries, including Australia, Austria, Italy, and Sweden, the album peaked in the Top 10. In the UK, the album peaked at № 23. As of 2011, the album has sold over 9 million copies worldwide, making it one of the most successful in the band's catalogue.
Seventeen months after Holy Wood (In the Shadow of the Valley of Death)s release, Manson commented on the album's lackluster US sales. He attributed the lack of commercial appeal to the musical climate of the time, but argued that it stood up comparatively well to contemporary albums of the rock genre. He noted that the band's US sales figures are usually in the region of one or two million records, so he did not find the sales figures disappointing.
Accolades
In 2001 Kerrang!Kerrang!
Kerrang! is a UK-based magazine devoted to rock music published by Bauer Media Group. It was first published on June 6, 1981 as a one-off supplement in the Sounds newspaper...
named Holy Wood the year's "Best Album" at their annual Kerrang! Awards. Manson sardonically remarked that "[there is] nothing like a good school shooting to inspire a record" when he collected the award.
Kerrang! ranked Holy Wood 9th in their list of Albums of the Year 2000. British magazine NME
NME
The New Musical Express is a popular music publication in the United Kingdom, published weekly since March 1952. It started as a music newspaper, and gradually moved toward a magazine format during the 1980s, changing from newsprint in 1998. It was the first British paper to include a singles...
ranked the album 34th in their critic's picks for the 50 Best Albums of 2000 in their "Decade In Music" series, calling it "A series of heroic rallying cries for the disenfranchised, while also baiting the American Far Right for all it's worth." The record ranked 30th in the Critics Top 50 and 9th in the Popular Poll of German magazine Musik Express/Sounds in their Albums of the Year 2000. The French edition of the British magazine Rock Sound
Rock Sound
Rock Sound is a British magazine which champions rock music. The magazine aims at being more "underground" and less commercial, whilst also giving coverage to more well known acts.-History:...
ranked Holy Wood 15th in the Le choix de la rédaction ("Editor's choice") and 5th in Le choix des lecteurs ("Reader's choice") of their Choix des critiques ("Critic's choice") Albums of the Year 2000. British magazine Record Collector
Record Collector
Record Collector is the United Kingdom's longest-running monthly music magazine. It distributes both within the UK and worldwide. It started in 1979.-The early years:...
also listed the album among their Best of 2000 list.
Legacy
On their November 10, 2010, issue, Kerrang! published a 10th-anniversary commemorative piece on the album titled "Screaming For Vengeance", in which they called the album "Manson's finest hour ... A decade on, there has still not been as eloquent and savage a musical attack on the media and mainstream culture as Manson achieved with Holy Wood ... [It is] still scathingly relevant today ... Compared to his contemporaries, Manson's ideas bristled with intelligence that few could match." The article went on to say, "... perhaps that's where Holy Wood achieved its greatest success. In deflecting the attention that was targeted at him back onto the media, they reacted exactly as he knew they would: by blustering and further exposing their own inadequacies ... The shame of it all, though, is that so little has changed. That the album is still so relevant today suggests it failed in its task of changing attitudes. That it exists at all, though, is a credit to a man who refused to sit and take it, but instead come out swinging."Guns, God and Government Tour
To support the release of the album, the band staged a worldwide stadium tour, three days after the album's original release date and seventeen days ahead of the album's actual launch, titled the Guns, God and Government Tour. Beginning on October 27, 2000, and lasting until September 2, 2001, the tour included six legs, spanning Eurasia, Japan, and North America, with a total of 107 completed shows out of the 109 planned. Typical of the band, the concerts were extremely theatrical, with an average show lasting for 1 hour and 40 minutes. The sets were designed with communistCommunism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
, religious, and "Celebritarian" imagery in mind. Manson had several costume changes throughout the sets, ranging from a bishop's dalmatic
Dalmatic
The dalmatic is a long wide-sleeved tunic, which serves as a liturgical vestment in the Roman Catholic, Lutheran, Anglican, and United Methodist Churches, which is sometimes worn by a deacon at the Mass or other services. Although infrequent, it may also be worn by bishops above the alb and below...
and mitre
Mitre
The mitre , also spelled miter, is a type of headwear now known as the traditional, ceremonial head-dress of bishops and certain abbots in the Roman Catholic Church, as well as in the Anglican Communion, some Lutheran churches, and also bishops and certain other clergy in the Eastern Orthodox...
(often confused for Papal regalia
Papal regalia and insignia
Papal regalia and insignia are the official items of attire and decoration proper to the Pope in his capacity as the head of the Roman Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City State.- Regalia :...
); a costume made from taxidermied
Taxidermy
Taxidermy is the act of mounting or reproducing dead animals for display or for other sources of study. Taxidermy can be done on all vertebrate species of animals, including mammals, birds, fish, reptiles, and amphibians...
animal anatomies (for example, an epaulette
Epaulette
Epaulette is a type of ornamental shoulder piece or decoration used as insignia of rank by armed forces and other organizations.Epaulettes are fastened to the shoulder by a shoulder strap or "passant", a small strap parallel to the shoulder seam, and the button near the collar, or by laces on the...
made from a horse's tail and a shirt made from skinned goat heads and ostrich spines); his signature black leather corset
Bondage corset
A bondage corset, used for BDSM, is a full-figured corset that is sometimes called a discipline corset.A bondage corset is very long, rigid, and restricting. It is constructed to place severe limitations on the wearer's movements...
, g-string
G-string
A G-string is a type of thong underwear or swimsuit, a narrow piece of cloth, leather, or plastic, that covers or holds the genitals, passes between the buttocks, and is attached to a band around the hips, worn as swimwear or underwear by women and men...
, and garter stocking
Garter (stockings)
Garters are articles of clothing: narrow bands of fabric fastened about the leg, used to keep up stockings, and sometimes socks. Normally just a few inches in width, they are usually made of leather or heavy cloth, and adorned with small bells and/or ribbons...
ensemble; an elaborate Roman
Roman Empire
The Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....
legionary
Legionary
The Roman legionary was a professional soldier of the Roman army after the Marian reforms of 107 BC. Legionaries had to be Roman citizens under the age of 45. They enlisted in a legion for twenty-five years of service, a change from the early practice of enlisting only for a campaign...
-style Imperial galea; an Allgemeine SS-style
Uniforms and insignia of the Schutzstaffel
The uniforms and insignia of the Schutzstaffel were paramilitary ranks and uniforms used by the SS between 1925 and 1945 to differentiate that organization from the regular German armed forces, the German state, and the Nazi Party....
peaked police cap; a black-and-white fur coat; and a giant rising conical skirt that lifted him 12 metres (39.4 ft) into the air.
The Ozzfest
Ozzfest
Ozzfest is an annual festival tour of the United States featuring performances by many heavy metal and hard rock musical groups. It was founded by Ozzy Osbourne and his wife Sharon Osbourne, both of whom also organize each yearly tour with their son Jack Osbourne...
leg was particularly notable on this tour, since it marked the band's first performance in Denver, Colorado
Denver, Colorado
The City and County of Denver is the capital and the most populous city of the U.S. state of Colorado. Denver is a consolidated city-county, located in the South Platte River Valley on the western edge of the High Plains just east of the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains...
, (on June 22, 2001, at the Mile High Stadium
Mile High Stadium
Mile High Stadium was a multi-purpose stadium, that stood in Denver, Colorado, from 1948 until 2001.It hosted the Denver Broncos, of the AFL and the NFL, from 1960-2000, the Colorado Rockies, of the National League, of the MLB, from 1993-1994, the Colorado Rapids, of MLS, from 1996-2001, the...
) following the Columbine High School massacre in nearby Littleton. After initially pulling out due to scheduling conflicts, the band altered their plans in order to accommodate the Denver date. The group's decision met heavy resistance from conservative groups. Manson received numerous death threats and calls to skip the date. A group of church leaders and families related to Columbine formed an organization specifically to oppose the show, called 'Citizens for Peace and Respect', which drew the support of Colorado governor
Governor of Colorado
The Governor of Colorado is the head of the executive branch of Colorado's government and the commander-in-chief of the state's military forces. The governor has a duty to enforce state laws, and the power to either approve or veto bills passed by the Colorado General Assembly, to convene the...
Bill Owens and representative Tom Tancredo
Tom Tancredo
Thomas Gerard "Tom" Tancredo is an American politician from Colorado, who represented the state's sixth congressional district in the United States House of Representatives from 1999 to 2009, as a Republican...
. On their website they asserted that the band "promotes hate, violence, death, suicide, drug use, and the attitudes and actions of the Columbine killers." In response, Manson issued a statement saying,
Two concert films depicting the worldwide tour were recorded. The Guns, God and Government DVD, released by Eagle Rock Entertainment
Eagle Rock Entertainment
Eagle Rock Entertainment is the largest producer and distributor of music programming for DVD, Blu-Ray, TV and Digital Media in the world. Eagle works directly alongside talent to produce top quality, high-definition and 3D programs, both concerts and documentaries, including The Rolling Stones,...
on October 29, 2002, featured live concert footage from performances in Los Angeles, Europe, Russia, and Japan. It also included a 30-minute behind-the-scenes featurette titled The Death Parade, with guest appearances from Ozzy Osbourne
Ozzy Osbourne
John Michael "Ozzy" Osbourne is an English vocalist, whose musical career has spanned over 40 years. Osbourne rose to prominence as lead singer of the pioneering English heavy metal band Black Sabbath, whose radically different, intentionally dark, harder sound helped spawn the heavy metal...
and Eminem
Eminem
Marshall Bruce Mathers III , better known by his stage name Eminem or his alter ego Slim Shady, is an American rapper, record producer, songwriter and actor. Eminem's popularity brought his group project, D12, to mainstream recognition...
. Seven years later, it was followed by Guns, God and Government – Live in L.A. Released on Blu-ray format by Eagle Rock Entertainment division Eagle Records on November 17, 2009, it depicted the sixteen-song set of the Los Angeles performance in its entirety.
Track listing
Notes- The disc contains a data trackMixed Mode CDA Mixed Mode CD is a Compact Disc in which two different data types are combined. Typically the first track is a data track while the rest are audio tracks...
which leads to a video no longer hosted by Interscope's website. This video was later included as a secret track on the companion DVD of Lest We Forget.
Album charts
| Charts (2000) | Peak position |
|---|---|
| Australia ARIA Charts The ARIA charts are the main Australian music sales charts, issued weekly by the Australian Recording Industry Association. The charts are a record of the highest selling singles and albums in various genres in Australia. ARIA commenced compiling its own charts in-house from the week ending 26 June... (ARIA Australian Recording Industry Association The Australian Recording Industry Association is a trade group representing the Australian recording industry which was established in 1983 by six major record companies, EMI, Festival, CBS, RCA, WEA and Universal replacing the Association of Australian Record Manufacturers which was formed in 1956... ) |
8 |
| Austria Austria Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the... (Ö3 Ö3 Austria Top 40 Ö3 Austria Top 40 is the name of the official Austrian singles chart, as well as the radio show which presents it, aired Fridays on Hitradio Ö3. The show presents the Austrian singles, ringtones and downloads chart. It premiered on 26 November 1968 as Disc Parade and was presented by Ernst Grissemann... ) |
6 |
| Belgium (Flanders) Flanders Flanders is the community of the Flemings but also one of the institutions in Belgium, and a geographical region located in parts of present-day Belgium, France and the Netherlands. "Flanders" can also refer to the northern part of Belgium that contains Brussels, Bruges, Ghent and Antwerp... (Ultratop 50 Ultratop 50 Ultratop 50 singles, often just Ultratop 50, is the weekly chart of fifty best-selling singles in Flanders, Belgium, and is produced and published by the Ultratop organization. The chart has existed since March 31, 1995... ) |
34 |
| Belgium (Wallonia) (Ultratop Ultratop Ultratop is an organization which generates and publishes the official record charts in Belgium, and it is also the name of most of those charts... ) |
29 |
| Canada Canada Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean... (CANOE Canadian Online Explorer Canadian Online Explorer is a bilingual online news and information site from Canada.A subsidiary of Quebecor Media, Canoe.ca is a leading local and national interactive media provider of news, entertainment and services, helping to inform and connect Canadians... ) |
13 |
| Finland Finland Finland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside... (Mitä Hitti Mitä hittiä The Official Finnish Charts is a national record chart in Finland composed by Musiikkituottajat – IFPI Finland.The singles chart was started in January 1991 as Radiomafian lista and was broadcast on the radio station Radiomafia of the Finnish Broadcasting Company, YLE. This chart is based on a... ) |
25 |
| France France The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France... (SNEP Syndicat National de l'Edition Phonographique The Syndicat national de l'édition phonographique is the inter-professional organization which protects the interests of the French record industry... ) |
12 |
| Germany Germany Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate... (Media Control Media Control Charts The official music charts in Germany are gathered and published by the company Media Control GfK International on behalf of Bundesverband Musikindustrie... ) |
11 |
| Ireland Ireland Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth... (IRMA Irish Recorded Music Association Irish Recorded Music Association is the Irish record industry association. IRMA is a non-profit association set up to manage and control the music industry in the Republic of Ireland.-Goals and activities:... ) |
21 |
| Italy Italy Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and... (FIMI Federation of the Italian Music Industry The Federation of the Italian Music Industry is an umbrella organization that keeps track of virtually all aspects of the music recording industry in Italy.... ) |
7 |
| Netherlands Netherlands The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders... (MegaCharts MegaCharts MegaCharts is responsible for the composition and exploitation of a broad collection of official charts in the Netherlands, of which the Mega Top 50 and the Mega Album Top 100 are the most known ones. Mega Charts also provides information to the Stichting Nederlandse Top 40, of which the Dutch Top... ) |
53 |
| New Zealand New Zealand New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga... (RIANZ Recording Industry Association of New Zealand The Recording Industry Association of New Zealand is a non-profit trade association of record producers, distributors and recording artists who sell music in New Zealand... ) |
18 |
| Norway Norway Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million... (VG-Lista VG-lista VG-listen is a Norwegian record chart. It is weekly presented in the newspaper VG and the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation program Topp 20. It is considered the primary Norwegian record chart, charting albums and singles from countries and continent around the world. The data is collected by... ) |
12 |
| Sweden Sweden Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund.... (Sverigetopplistan Sverigetopplistan Sverigetopplistan, earlier known as Topplistan and Hitlistan and other names, is since October 2007 the Swedish national record chart, based on sales data from Swedish Recording Industry Association .... ) |
7 |
| Switzerland Switzerland Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition.... (Hitparade Swiss Music Charts The Swiss Music Charts are Switzerland's main music sales charts. The charts are a record of the highest-selling singles and albums in various genres in Switzerland.The Swiss Charts include:* Singles Top 75... ) |
20 |
| United Kingdom United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages... (OCC) |
23 |
| United States United States The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district... Billboard 200 Billboard 200 The Billboard 200 is a ranking of the 200 highest-selling music albums and EPs in the United States, published weekly by Billboard magazine. It is frequently used to convey the popularity of an artist or groups of artists... |
13 |
| Billboard Billboard (magazine) Billboard is a weekly American magazine devoted to the music industry, and is one of the oldest trade magazines in the world. It maintains several internationally recognized music charts that track the most popular songs and albums in various categories on a weekly basis... Top Internet Albums |
10 |
Certifications
| Region | Provider | Certification | Shipment | Actual sales |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Canada | CRIA Canadian Recording Industry Association Music Canada is a Toronto-based, non-profit trade organization that was founded 9 April 1963 to represent the interests of companies that record, artists, manufacture, production, promotion and distribution of music in Canada... |
Gold | 50,000+ | — |
| Switzerland | IFPI | Gold | 20,000+ | — |
| United States | RIAA Recording Industry Association of America The Recording Industry Association of America is a trade organization that represents the recording industry distributors in the United States... |
Gold | 500,000+ | — |
Singles
| Single | Chart (2000) | Peak position |
|---|---|---|
| "Disposable Teens Disposable Teens "Disposable Teens" is a song by American rock band Marilyn Manson. It is the first single from their fourth full-length studio album, Holy Wood , released in 2001.... " |
Australia ARIA Charts The ARIA charts are the main Australian music sales charts, issued weekly by the Australian Recording Industry Association. The charts are a record of the highest selling singles and albums in various genres in Australia. ARIA commenced compiling its own charts in-house from the week ending 26 June... (ARIA Australian Recording Industry Association The Australian Recording Industry Association is a trade group representing the Australian recording industry which was established in 1983 by six major record companies, EMI, Festival, CBS, RCA, WEA and Universal replacing the Association of Australian Record Manufacturers which was formed in 1956... ) |
24 |
| France France The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France... (SNEP Syndicat National de l'Edition Phonographique The Syndicat national de l'édition phonographique is the inter-professional organization which protects the interests of the French record industry... ) |
67 | |
| Italy Italy Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and... (FIMI Federation of the Italian Music Industry The Federation of the Italian Music Industry is an umbrella organization that keeps track of virtually all aspects of the music recording industry in Italy.... ) |
7 | |
| Netherlands Netherlands The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders... (MegaCharts MegaCharts MegaCharts is responsible for the composition and exploitation of a broad collection of official charts in the Netherlands, of which the Mega Top 50 and the Mega Album Top 100 are the most known ones. Mega Charts also provides information to the Stichting Nederlandse Top 40, of which the Dutch Top... ) |
99 | |
| Sweden Sweden Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund.... (Sverigetopplistan Sverigetopplistan Sverigetopplistan, earlier known as Topplistan and Hitlistan and other names, is since October 2007 the Swedish national record chart, based on sales data from Swedish Recording Industry Association .... ) |
52 | |
| Switzerland Switzerland Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition.... (Hitparade Swiss Music Charts The Swiss Music Charts are Switzerland's main music sales charts. The charts are a record of the highest-selling singles and albums in various genres in Switzerland.The Swiss Charts include:* Singles Top 75... ) |
73 | |
| United Kingdom United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages... (OCC) |
12 | |
| U.S. United States The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district... Billboard Billboard (magazine) Billboard is a weekly American magazine devoted to the music industry, and is one of the oldest trade magazines in the world. It maintains several internationally recognized music charts that track the most popular songs and albums in various categories on a weekly basis... Mainstream Rock Tracks |
22 | |
| Billboard Billboard (magazine) Billboard is a weekly American magazine devoted to the music industry, and is one of the oldest trade magazines in the world. It maintains several internationally recognized music charts that track the most popular songs and albums in various categories on a weekly basis... Modern Rock Tracks |
24 |
| Single | Chart (2001) | Peak position |
|---|---|---|
| "The Fight Song" | Austria Austria Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the... (Ö3 Ö3 Austria Top 40 Ö3 Austria Top 40 is the name of the official Austrian singles chart, as well as the radio show which presents it, aired Fridays on Hitradio Ö3. The show presents the Austrian singles, ringtones and downloads chart. It premiered on 26 November 1968 as Disc Parade and was presented by Ernst Grissemann... ) |
59 |
| Finland Finland Finland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside... (Mitä Hitti Mitä hittiä The Official Finnish Charts is a national record chart in Finland composed by Musiikkituottajat – IFPI Finland.The singles chart was started in January 1991 as Radiomafian lista and was broadcast on the radio station Radiomafia of the Finnish Broadcasting Company, YLE. This chart is based on a... ) |
19 | |
| United Kingdom United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages... (OCC) |
24 |
| Single | Chart (2001) | Peak position |
|---|---|---|
| "The Nobodies The Nobodies (song) "The Nobodies" is a song by American industrial rock band Marilyn Manson. It is the third and final single from their fourth studio album, Holy Wood , released in 2001.... " |
Austria Austria Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the... (Ö3 Ö3 Austria Top 40 Ö3 Austria Top 40 is the name of the official Austrian singles chart, as well as the radio show which presents it, aired Fridays on Hitradio Ö3. The show presents the Austrian singles, ringtones and downloads chart. It premiered on 26 November 1968 as Disc Parade and was presented by Ernst Grissemann... ) |
56 |
| France France The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France... (SNEP Syndicat National de l'Edition Phonographique The Syndicat national de l'édition phonographique is the inter-professional organization which protects the interests of the French record industry... ) |
94 | |
| Italy Italy Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and... (FIMI Federation of the Italian Music Industry The Federation of the Italian Music Industry is an umbrella organization that keeps track of virtually all aspects of the music recording industry in Italy.... ) |
17 | |
| Spain Spain Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula... (PROMUSICAE) |
8 | |
| Switzerland Switzerland Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition.... (Hitparade Swiss Music Charts The Swiss Music Charts are Switzerland's main music sales charts. The charts are a record of the highest-selling singles and albums in various genres in Switzerland.The Swiss Charts include:* Singles Top 75... ) |
96 | |
| United Kingdom United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages... (OCC) |
34 |
Credits and personnel
Marilyn Manson- Marilyn MansonMarilyn MansonMarilyn Manson may refer to:* Marilyn Manson , an American rock musician* Marilyn Manson , the American rock band led by the singer of the same name...
– arranger, vocals, producer, art direction, concept, syncussion, optiganOptiganThe Optigan was an electronic keyboard instrument designed for the consumer market. The name stems from the instrument's reliance on pre-recorded optical soundtracks to reproduce sound...
, mellotronMellotronThe Mellotron is an electro-mechanical, polyphonic tape replay keyboard originally developed and built in Birmingham, England in the early 1960s. It superseded the Chamberlin Music Master, which was the world's first sample-playback keyboard intended for music...
, distorted flute, synth bass, keyboards, piano, pianette, ambiance, electric harpsichord, rhythm guitar - Twiggy RamirezJeordie WhiteJeordie Osbourne White , better known by his pseudonym Twiggy Ramirez , is an American musician, who is best known for being the bassist and guitarist for Marilyn Manson. He was also the bassist for A Perfect Circle, and Nine Inch Nails...
– bass, guitar (rhythm, lead, LeslieLeslie speakerThe Leslie speaker is a specially constructed amplifier/loudspeaker used to create special audio effects using the Doppler effect. Named after its inventor, Donald Leslie, it is particularly associated with the Hammond organ but is used with a variety of instruments as well as vocals. The...
, warped), keyboards - John 5John LoweryJohn William Lowery , best known by the stage name John 5, is an American guitarist. His stage name was bestowed on him in 1998 when he left David Lee Roth and joined the industrial metal group Marilyn Manson as their guitarist, taking over from Zim Zum...
– guitar (lead, rhythm, acoustic, synth, electric, slide, phase) - Madonna Wayne GacyMadonna Wayne GacyStephen Gregory Bier Jr., formerly known by his stage name Madonna Wayne Gacy is the former keyboard player for Marilyn Manson, 1989-2007. His stage name came from the names of the singer Madonna and the serial killer John Wayne Gacy...
– synths, ambiance, keyboards, samples, bass synth, synth strings, mellotronMellotronThe Mellotron is an electro-mechanical, polyphonic tape replay keyboard originally developed and built in Birmingham, England in the early 1960s. It superseded the Chamberlin Music Master, which was the world's first sample-playback keyboard intended for music...
, "children's choir and canned laughter of dead people unsure of why they are laughing" - Ginger FishGinger FishKenneth Robert Wilson , better known by his stage name Ginger Fish, is an American drummer primarily known for playing drums for Marilyn Manson 1995-2011...
– drums (live, drum machine), death & siren loops, keyboards
Production
- Bon HarrisBon HarrisBon Harris is an English composer, producer, singer/song writer, and multi-instrumentalist. He is a founding member of the quintessential British EBM group Nitzer Ebb, programming Nitzer Ebb's signature sound...
of Nitzer EbbNitzer EbbNitzer Ebb is a British EBM group formed in 1982 by Essex school friends Vaughan "Bon" Harris , Douglas McCarthy , and David Gooday .-Band name:...
– synthesizers, programming, pre-production editing, organic drum programming, bass, keyboard, synth bass, "insect hi-hat", sleigh bells, (destructive) manipulation, electronics, piano - Paulie Northfield – additional engineering
- D. Sardy (Dave Sardy) – producer, synths, (organic) drum programming, mixing, noise rhythm guitar, "pills"
- P.R. Brown – art direction, design, photography
- Greg FidelmanGreg FidelmanGreg Fidelman is an American music engineer, producer and mix engineer. He has worked with many renowned and highly regarded bands in various genres, many in the heavier rock or metal genres, including Metallica, Slayer, Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Bush, Audio Slave, Marilyn Manson, Slipknot, and...
– engineer, all Pro-Tools - Nick RaskulineczNick RaskulineczNick Raskulinecz is a Grammy-winning American record producer. He resides in Nashville, Tennessee.-Production career:Raskulinecz is from the Bearden area of Knoxville, Tennessee. He first produced and recorded bands in Knoxville on a 8-track recorder that his grandfather bought for him...
– assistant engineer - Joe Zook – assistant engineer
- Kevin Guarnieri – assistant engineer
- Danny SaberDanny SaberDanny Saber is a Los Angeles, California musician, audio engineer, record producer, and remixer. A former member of Black Grape and Agent Provocateur, Saber plays guitar, bass, organ, and keyboards, and is also a prominent Los Angeles DJ....
– additional loops - Alex Suttle – backing vocals
External links
- Holy Wood (In the Shadow of the Valley of Death) at Interscope RecordsInterscope RecordsInterscope Records is an American record label owned by Universal Music Group that currently operates as one third of UMG's Interscope-Geffen-A&M label group.-History:...