When rage-fueled shock rock has long since faded into the tapestry of embarrassing has-been fads, there's not a lot of places left for Marilyn Manson to go. So naturally, we really shouldn't be too surprised when his latest video features him beating a doppelganger of his ex-girlfriend (actress Evan Rachel Wood) to death with his bare hands.
Watch "Running To The Edge Of The World" - and in case it wasn't clear before, this is NSFW:
Leave it to Mr. Warner to bring snuff films to the mainstream. He spends the majority of the video looking like the sad clown that he is, with a dash of raw humanity that he's built an entire career out of avoiding. Directed by Nathan Cox and Manson, the first four minutes is essentially a constant close-up of Manson's face, where he seems on the verge of crying the entire time.
A cheap way to get attention, sure. But Brian Warner seems to be running out of options in his quest to make people pay attention to him. Self-loathing, destructive moping and general hatred for the world has been done to death. So why not resort to bitter outbursts of heartache and extreme revenge fantasies?
In a
Q&A with TIME, Manson said: “I’ve lost friends. I’ve lost love. I’ve lost money. And this record is really about loss. The last album had a lot of romantic, Shakespearean ideals attached to the music, like ‘The world doesn’t understand us. Let’s die together.’ Now? This record is more about, ‘If you say you’ll be with me until I die and then you change your mind, you should run very fast. Because I’ll kill you.’”
Manson is currently on tour in support of his seventh studio album, The High End Of Low, which was released in May.