Marilyn Manson is best known as being the lead singer of the band Marilyn Manson. Heavy makeup (bright white face paint with blood red lips), black hair, and one ‘dead’ eye became his trademark. The musician has been around since 1989 ”“ earning a reputation for creating mayhem in the entertainment industry with his lyrics and theatrical style”¦and he’s still stirring controversy. With the 2012 re-release of Manson’s eighth studio album, ‘Born Villain,’ you’ll notice the logo artwork looks quite similar to an infamous symbol of evil.
The new logo pays homage to the color model referred to as CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow and black) ”“ a popular choice in color printing. The spiral rhombus pattern is created by four M’s that reference the first letters of the band’s name. The ends of the cyan and yellow M’s form a Chinese trigram that is associated from the I Ching. However, the logo meant to represent the eighth studio album and new chapter in the band’s existence has distinct similarities to the Nazi swastika.
Songs that appear on ‘Born Villain’ are not any tamer than past albums, and include selections such as “Children of Cain,’ ‘The Flowers of Evil,’ and ‘Murderers are Getting Prettier Every Day.’
Some of the scandalous moments and references regarding the history of Marilyn Manson (the individual musician and band) include:
- For starters, as revealed in his autobiography titled, ‘The Long Hard Road Out of Hell,’ Manson states that the idea of forming a music group called Marilyn Manson and the Spooky Kids is linked to perverse influences ”“ namely his grandfather’s sexual fetishes, which included sadomasochism and bestiality. The band has been associated with controversy and sending out a demonic message.
- The rock band traveled around the world for their Dead to the World Tour (1996-1997), where religious and civic groups held numerous protests. Groups, such as the American Family Association, had deemed the band as being anti-Christian. For example, a church vitral of Jesus was the background for the Dead to the World Tour. When Manson performed the opening piece called ‘Angel with the Scabbed Wings,’ he would walk down a set of long stairs.
- Self-mutilation has been a recurring element in the band’s message, lyrics and stage performances.
- Born Brian Hugh Warner, the musician combined the names of beauty icon Marilyn Monroe and serial killer Charles Manson to create the stage name, Marilyn Manson.
- One of the most controversial things that Manson would do when performing on stage was to rip out pages of the Bible.
- The ‘dead’ eye of Marilyn Manson is an example of single eye symbolism, which is connected to demonic, evil, and wicked entities.
- A song on the Marilyn Manson album ‘The High End of Low’ is called “Pretty as a Swastika.”
- The many tattoos on Marilyn Manson’s body point to representations of evil that include a green skull and crossbones, a red Devil with dice that read ‘666,’ a green eye surrounded by black tentacles (possibly an ‘evil eye’), a green Cyclops head with a single horn, and a skullhead butterfly. The musician also has a tattoo of Baphomet (a figure of occultism and Satanism), which is in an inverted pentagram position.
