Manson continues masquerade

The latex provocateur smothered his own flames, sort of, like Satan swallowing a fire extinguisher.

"Shock is all in your head," Marilyn Manson bellowed like he was leading a pep rally of the damned Halloween night at The Pearl, courting controversy and disavowing it in the same breath, speaking from both sides of his painted mouth.

He's right, of course: On a night devoted to scare tactics, Manson demonstrated that he's still an ace at mocking the various fears he does his best to stoke.

He set Bibles on fire, performed a mock beheading of a female stage performer, fired himself at the crowd like a sweaty bullet and advertised his taste for mind-altering substances, as if tunes such as "The Dope Show" weren't self-explanatory enough.

"How many of you people did drugs tonight?" he asked to applause. "That's what I thought," he leered.

"I'm at the low end of a bad acid trip."

True to form, the show was alive with lysergic flourishes: Brightly colored pills rained down a giant video screen at the back of the stage, dense clouds of dry ice created the ominous fog of a low budget sci-fi flick and Manson even donned a shiny silver boxer's robe and sang from within a makeshift, velvet rope boxing ring during a snarling "Fight Song."

It was some good vaudevillian fun, a mix of the Grand Guignol and Ziggy Stardust set to a throbbing industrial metal grind well-suited for either the bedroom or a bar fight.

Manson's latest disc, the grim, introspective "Eat Me, Drink Me," tones down the guitars and the doomsday vitriol in favor of dark, moody, lovelorn pop daggers.

"Don't break my heart," he pleaded during the chiming "Heart-Shaped Glasses," sounding pretty wounded for a dude who once professed himself to be the Antichrist.

Wonder whether Beelzebub ever gets a little weepy when reminiscing about the banshee who got away?

It's just as well, though.

Now that much of the hysteria that initially engulfed Manson for his anti-religious sloganeering has largely subsided, it's a bit easier to see him for what he really is: a wily showman, sharp as razor wire, who no longer seems that interested in pushing anybody's buttons but his own.

Of course, controversy still finds him.

During a seething "Irresponsible Hate Anthem," newspaper clips related to the recent school shooting in Cleveland were projected on the big screen, with Manson being named as a favorite performer of the shooter.

It's a tenuous connection at best: Did anyone talk about who East Coast sniper John Allen Muhammed liked to rock out to upon his capture? Were there any headlines about what was on Virginia Tech shooter Seung-Hui Cho's iPod after his rampage?

Of course not, but Manson makes for an easy target, an obvious bogeyman, when in fact he doesn't hold sway over his audience like even he'd like to -- otherwise, he would be selling a lot more records these days.

But no one knows what a ruse it all really is like Manson himself, and he's always served up his napalm with a wink.

"Life's no fun without a good scare," he sang during a show-ending take on "The Nightmare Before X-Mas" theme, as one cartoon character paid tribute to another.

Contact reporter Jason Bracelin at jbracelin @reviewjournal.com or (702) 383-0476