The Golden Age Of Grotesque - Marilyn Manson ***** Heavy metals arch nutter roars back with his fifth studio album. There has been a lot of whining in the music press about Holywood, its poor sales and anti commercial direction, well, regulars will know that I don't really give a stuff for mainstream/commercial rock, indeed there is a special buzz from knowing that only you and six other people bought a particular album. That said, Golden Age is as bouncy, poppy and singalong as Herr Dokter Manson ever gets. There are seventeen tracks on the UK album version, well, fourteen if you discount the opening and closing spooky noises bits and Tainted Love. If it is commercial Manson you are looking for, this album certainly harks back to the slightly more mainstream rock of Mechanical Animals, tracks like Dull Dagga Buzz Buzz Ziggety Zag and Ka-Boom Ka-Boom have nice, infectious hooks with bouncy drum beats. There are plenty of mass audience participation swear 'n shout tracks, Use Your Fist And Not Your Mouth, Vodevil and (s)Aint. Para-Noir is a half spoken word, half screeched piece that comes over like the darker, uglier cousin of the dating song from Pandora's Box (anyone except me remember that?) Lyrically, Manson has made many claims about the direction of this album and its influences, but to be honest, it's mostly the same old same old, plenty of f words, digs at the church and God, sex, rock and roll and, er, no drugs references actually, is Brian slowing down in his old age? Although it has become apparent in recent interviews that Mazza's head is now so firmly up his own backside that he is in danger of vanishing from sight, I hope he can manage another album or two, on this form it would be well worth it, and rock needs some complete nutters, when the scene is still swamped by piss poor second rate artists like Linkin Park ('Hey, let's record the first album again and re-issue it, twice!'), Papa Roach ('Lets record a really crap second album"), Good Charlotte (you are not punk, you are pop, please fuck off) and New Found Glory (you are not punk, please fuck off faster), and don't even get me started on Busted, we need some totally left field, mondo bizarro nutjobs to keep the balance.