Formed in 1989 by 3 Florida 20-somethings Marilyn Manson and the Spooky Kids made their major record label debut under the guidance of Nine Inch Nails creator Trent Reznor 5 years later. On June 9, 1994 the world was treated to the release of the first single by a strange new band with the shortened name Marilyn Manson. The song, “Get Your Gunn”, is inspired by the murder of abortion doctor David Gunn by a pro-life activist in an act the song’s composer calls “the ultimate hypocrisy.” It should have been clear from the beginning we weren’t dealing with just another rock singer who wanted to see how loud and obnoxious he could be.

“Pseudo-morals work real well on the talk shows for the weak
Selective judgments, good guy badges don’t mean a fk to me”

Only a few years earlier, Kurt Cobain moved a generation with his angst, but I remained untouched because I was just never a very angst-ridden teen. However Manson’s songs of being the lone boy on the playground, the picked on and the disenchanted, would have been right up my alley. Unfortunately, I was about 13 years late to the party, as usual, and only discovered this album in the summer of 2007.

I’d owned Manson’s masterpiece ANTICHRIST SUPERSTAR--more on that later--for about 6 or 7 years, but that was it. After the hoopla made about his then-new release EAT ME, DRINK ME, and being slightly disappointed in it--more on that later--I decided to go back and fill in the gaps. For the longest time PORTRAIT OF AN AMERICAN FAMILY just didn’t click with me, probably because later works like MECHANICAL ANIMALS and HOLY WOOD are obvious leaps above where Manson and family started that to give this album more than the most passing glances always felt to me like choosing a musty old Big Mac when the Whopper with cheese is sitting right there, hot and juicy and mine for the taking--but more on those later.

I admit now my shunning of this album was unfair because while, musically, it’s not too terribly different from any other random metal act, there are two things that have always set Manson apart. One is his vocals. The man does some pretty interesting things with his voice, especially on songs like “My Monkey”, “Dogma”, and “Sweet Tooth”. But moreso it’s the writing. With a background in journalism and a mind that never stops thinking, Manson was taking important issues and turning them into some truly hard rocking tunes right from the beginning.

There was the obvious one, the first single quoted earlier, and then there was the album’s third single, “Lunchbox” which recalls a 1972 law banning metal lunchboxes in schools and tells the story of a picked on kid with big dreams:

“The big bully try to stick his finger in my chest
Try to tell me, tell me he's the best
I don't really give a good gddamn cause
I got my lunchbox and I'm armed real well
. . .
I wanna grow up
I wanna be a big rock and roll star
I wanna grow up
I wanna be
So no one fks with me”

I was never full of angst, but THAT I can relate to. Whether intentional or not--and I believe it was--Manson was speaking not to a generation (because these feelings don’t necessarily end at adulthood), but to those people the world over, of all ages, who feel bullied by the bigger kids. Maybe the message wasn’t the most peaceful, but you know what, sometimes you don’t want peace, you want revenge, and we are able to experience that momentary sense of justice through a song that is, in every sense, the album’s high point. Manson has a certain flare for angry songs and “Lunchbox” is one of his shining moments of true glory. The song conveys such a feeling of indignation, and such honesty, you know he’s been there before and wasn’t exactly unscathed by the experience.

That anger carries over into a later song, “Snake Eyes and Sissies”:

“Wrench is just a household god but I carry mine with pride
I don’t work but I can work with it to split your smile
Run you down without a twitch, your car's just not as big as mine
Tear the son out of your btch and sprinkle your remains with lime”

Another Manson trademark I’ve always admired is his play on words.

“Bible-belt ‘round anglo-waste, putting sinners in their place”

And

“I hate what I have become to escape what I hated being
Calliopenis envy from your daddy
You're not gonna hear what he don't want to hear
What I say disgusts him”

There are a few moments of banality, of course. I could lose “Cyclops” and “Dogma” and never miss them. And thematically this album should wear out its welcome about halfway through, but song for song, there’s something of appeal all through PORTRAIT OF AN AMERICAN FAMILY. The production in a song like “My Monkey” or the passage in “Wrapped in Plastic” that always makes me shiver,

“I'm only as deep as the self that I dig
I'm only as sick as the stick in the pig
‘thin and so white, thin and so white’
daddy tells the daughter
while mommy's sleeping at night
to wash away sin you must take off your skin
the righteous father wears the yellowist grin”

PORTRAIT delivers nearly every single time. The band was playing their hearts out on every tune, and whether they were deft or merely adequate, they rocked it out. Their debut offered a very limited and I believe misleading portrait of this band’s potential, but as an introduction it served its purpose. PORTRAIT OF AN AMERICAN FAMILY is far from the best Marilyn Manson record, but it kicks a$$ in all the right ways.