Written by Daniel Lukes
Editor’s note:
Today we’re proud to feature an op-ed from Daniel Lukes, a heavy music and culture writer who’s also co-editor of the book Black Metal Rainbows (you can find the BMR compilation album here).
On Wednesday May 15, 2024 it was announced that metal label Nuclear Blast had signed a record deal with Marilyn Manson, and that a new album was forthcoming. This comes in the wake of announcements of a North American tour, supporting Five Finger Death Punch, and accompanied by Slaughter to Prevail and The Funeral Portrait. Slaughter to Prevail have been in the media lately for frontman Alex Terrible’s homophobia and Nazi past.
“The news has actually made me feel a bit ill. There is no way M*rilyn M*nson should still be in this industry,” tweeted music journalist Emma Wilkes. I feel the same. As I scrolled Twitter and comments sections, I read expressions of outrage and disappointment, but also many, many expressions of joy and enthusiasm for Manson’s return. One Twitter poster (with a Christian cross plus US and Israeli flags in username), joked “All proceeds go to a woman’s shelter in Los Angeles.” You can’t make this shit up.
Right-wingers are fond of talking about “Cancel Culture” – Bill Maher recently argued that Louis CK should be forgiven and welcomed back into mainstream culture, even though he won a Grammy in 2022 and had a sold-out show at Madison Square Garden in 2023. But you know what Maher means. He wants blanket forgiveness for Louis CK, which means the cultural capital of liberal approval – even left-wing approval if they could get it.
By offering Marilyn Manson a record deal, Monte Conner and Nuclear Blast, a respected metal label founded in 1987, are giving Manson not only an economic boost. By helping Manson build his reputation back up and make him persona grata once again, they are giving him that cultural capital back. Someone who according to many accounts is a serial rapist and abuser is being welcomed back into the club.
We should not be surprised. But we can still be hurt and disappointed. After Rammstein singer Till Lindemann was accused of drugging and raping young women at aftershow parties with the help of associates, with dozens of stories emerging of his abusive and criminal behavior, the Berlin prosecutor declining to pursue the case in the criminal courts has meant an end to his “cancellation.” Business as usual resumes.
But the stories remain. As they did also in the wake of Maynard James Keenan of Tool/A Perfect Circle being accused of rape in 2018. As I Lay Dying, whose band leader Tim Lambesis hired what he thought was a hitman to murder his wife, are playing New England Metal & Hardcore Fest 2024 along with dozens of other bands: has a single one of them denounced AILD’s presence on the bill and pulled out of the festival?
We live in an era of returning fascism and backlash patriarchy: an era of evil triumphant, in which serial rapists run for president, and sitting presidents enable the massacre of thousands of children and adults, which we are forced to watch on a daily basis. Fascist clowning is the vehicle by which we are fed this evil and consume it as entertainment.
These are our bread and circuses, distracting us from rising temperatures, obscenely widening wealth gaps, burning wildfires, food precarities, displaced populations, and coming disasters.
Marilyn Manson was once hailed as a savvy critic of the evil of the world, an enemy of power and its abuses, an ally to outcasts and the downtrodden of the world. Then it came to light that hiding behind that reputation, was a man carrying out the very evil he purported to expose in others. He is now perfectly aligned with power as abuse, power as a force for evil in the world.
I refuse to accept a world which embraces rape and mass murder as points of pride or business as usual. Shame on Nuclear Blast, especially its president Monte Conner, and everyone working to rehabilitate Manson and his career. He does not belong in the music industry anymore.
Daniel Lukes writes about heavy music, pop culture, and literature. A former contributor to Kerrang!,Terrorizer, and Decibel, he is co-editor of Black Metal Rainbows, and co-organizer of Ultimate Outsider Genre: Diversity, Metal, Activism a conference at University College London’s Institute of Advanced Studies in September 2024.