Even his detractors have to admit that Brian Warner — Marilyn Manson’s alter ego — has a wonderful sense of timing. Sensing that he had squeezed the last remaining spurt of shock and outrage from his artistic toothpaste tube with last year’s disappointing The Golden Age of Grotesque, here comes the inevitable greatest hits, a riot of overdriven cyber-rock, sexual perversion and hormonal aggression that fair crackles with calculated outrage. These are the words, the noise and the persona that so gleefully pushed the buttons of the Establishment, and as such, they’re impressive.

However, for all his intellectual acuity, there’s something gratingly obvious and shallow about Manson’s music: his schlock-rock cover of Personal Jesus lacks the power of Johnny Cash’s subtly sinister version, though doubtless it plays better to suburban goth teens. Lest We Forget, for all its transient thrills, merely proves that, far from being the anti-Establishment messiah, Brian’s just a very naughty boy.

Stevie Chick

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