Album: Marilyn Manson, Born Villain (Cooking Vinyl)

One of the great things about the Sex Pistols was their brevity, the way John Lydon called time on the antagonism after a single album to embark on more fruitful endeavours.

Listening to Born Villain, the umpteenth tirade of vituperative torment from Marilyn Manson, it's striking how static Manson's career has been: he started out hating pretty much everything, and stayed that way. Here, the narrow range of his alienated worldview is ironically indicated by the song title “Breaking the Same Old Ground”: pantomime-villain railings against the universe spiced with a frisson of sexual violence (“Pistol Whipped”), croaked over unimaginative golem riffs. If he tried to find something he liked, he might actually make something worth listening to.

Download: Overneath the Path of Misery