MARILYN MANSON LIVE AT CONCORD PAVILION IN CONCORD, CA ON 8/13/16

HAIL THE PALE EMPEROR

I’ve seen many live performances through the years of the shock icon Marilyn Manson. Tonight he takes the form of the ‘Pale Emperor’ from his most recent studio album by the same name. After two decades in the music industry, will his performance be about shock value, theatrics, & religion, or will he be persecuted again for his drunken state as he has been in several of his last outings?

As the curtain dropped, Manson and his band were already onstage and coming out in full force and starting the show with ‘Angel With the Scabbed Wings’. The Manson that took the stage was a lean, aggressive, and very much in control performer. Tonight’s performance has all the makings of a memorable performance. The stage show was there, the music was definitely on point, and the shock icon was in rare form. Tonight was a version of Manson that was almost looking for redemption for some of his past performances. Manson worked the stage and band members like bassist Twiggy Ramirez, guitarist Paul Wiley and Tyler Bates had their time to also share in the spotlight.

The theatrics you come to expect were still there like the grandmaster podium, The four point walking stilts, the smoke and flash posts, but the best part is that Manson’s stage presence was just as hungry as his early days in the Florida clubs with a lot more swag. What Manson show would be complete without hearing ‘The Beautiful People’, ‘The Dope Show’, ‘Antichrist Superstar’, and his eerie rendition of the Eurythmic’s “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This). It was great to see the Marilyn Manson onstage that has built a career on strong music, a great live show, and was still hungry for disrupting society and doing it his way.