Octo_Russ

Various Artists ['Sanctuary' 28 Gothic Anthems]

Well here's something different, just in case you think i'm a soft middle aged guy, i do like stuff that is heavy and loud too, this is an excellent compilation album, certainly Gothic, but it also has a flavour of Punk and Metal about it too, it's hard to pigeonhole the album.

Ultimately i feel that the album has too many average tracks within it, especially disc two, and there's a flavour of Indie music which is out of place, i'm sure i won't keep this album, however these type of albums can work out a wonderful way to sample a whole bunch of Artists/Bands, and give you a great introduction point to some you especially like, that's exactly what's happened here with my first listen of this album.

I really liked tracks 2, 7-8 & 14, especially track 7 'The Beautiful People' by Marilyn Manson, now i'm certainly not a Marilyn Manson fan, in fact i see him as a modern day Alice Cooper, and i hated Alice Cooper, in my mind Marilyn Manson was all image and no substance, a Shock Rocker doing obscene things to get noticed, because his music can't speak for itself, so it was a huge surprise to find this track is so phenomenally good, wow! i like it a lot, and come to think of it his stage persona is quite endearing too!, one of the other things that happened is that this track lead me onto 'Blitzkreig' by Deathstars, another wonderful discovery, i'll have to get their album too!.

'The Beautiful People' starts off with these delicious damn drums! [0:04+], that permeate through the whole song, it's this powerful tribal beat which makes the track, something that The Sweet or Adam & The Ants would do, a bass guitar comes in [0:11+], and then the buzz guitar [0:20+], and we've got a real riff going, Manson comes in on the first verse whispering loudly! [0:45+], a nice touch is him singing the word 'wrong' in a falsetto voice [0:53], it's dynamite, the chorus is screamed by Manson [1:24+],

Hey you, what do you see?

Something beautiful, something free?

Hey you, are you trying to be mean?

If you live with apes man, it's hard to be clean

another nice touch is singing 'the horrible people, the horrible people' in a mocking whining voice [1:51+], later when the words 'the beautiful people' are whispered four times, with an 'ahhh' at the end [2:45+], there's this lovely tick tock sound made by the drums, a nice moment indeed, the whole track is a genius of a creation.

Here's Marilyn Manson singing 'The Beautiful People' on YouTube, the video is really good, very arty.