Concert Review: Marilyn Manson / Slayer / Bleeding Through

by Todd Maternowski

Next time, bring the kids!

GRAND PRAIRIE — Nokia got a little more family-friendly Thursday night when iconic shock-rocker Marilyn Manson came to town, supported by legendary thrash metal band Slayer and up-and-coming metalcore act Bleeding Through. (Devout metalheads can hear our interview with Bleeding Through here). The show was a virtual how-to manual on overly graphic visual display, and kept the packed Nokia bowl writhing in rock all night.

Alas, due to some make-up and traffic related delays, my wife and I arrived at the ripe old time of 8:16pm -- just late enough to completely miss Bleeding Through and the beginning of Slayer's set --no doubt setting an all-time record for Earliest Metal Show Start-Time in History. Still, as we got to our decidedly non-metal seats, Slayer was already in full-on thrash metal battle mode, pounding their lightning-fast paeans to war, death and heresy through two massive upside-down crosses made entirely of Marshall stacks. While singer Tom Araya's tone-deaf screaming didn't quite work over the stadium-filling speakers, no one is going to complain when the noise of Kerry King's ridiculously badass guitar is melting faces at Slayer's typical breakneck speed.

Slayer's show was top-notch, with background images unique to every song and just the sort of extremely disturbing imagery you'd want from a band that's spent 26 years getting banned, chastised and taken off of store shelves. Combining videos of actual executions with heavy 9/11, Nazi and satanic imagery --all interspersed with the simple-yet-effective Slayer logo-- created a hyponotic effect, especially when the light show was working with the music. Slayer plays fast, and loud, and doesn't let up -- if you're not into that, I believe The Sippycups will be in town soon, you may want to get your tickets now.

Word has it that this tour is using a half-dozen big rigs to transport all of the set changes, and after seeing Marilyn Manson you can easily understand why. After a lengthy delay inbetween Slayer and Manson (they removed the two huge Marshall stack crosses, amongst other things), Manson worked the crowd into a seething frenzy before exploding onto the stage like some sort of iconoclastic rock demigod. For the next hour and a half, Manson played mostly just his Greatest Hits, changing entire sets and going through a costume change for all but a handful of songs.

Some of the sets were brilliantly-done monuments to arena rock showmanship: the AntiChrist Superstar podium, a boxing ring complete with ceiling-mounted mike, a set composed mostly of huge banks of lit candles. Some sets were more genius than the others: for example, blacking out the stage and playing a clip from Alice in Wonderland, only to reveal Manson atop a 15-foot wooden chair, writhing and putting it all out there for the screamin' ladies (Manson's always been at his best combining childlike imagery with his deliciously debauched depravity). Or his KISS-esque take on the rising platform, which, although no bigger than 5x5 feet catapulted Manson 25 feet into the air and shot up huge jets of smoke to create the illusion of a floating pedestal of unholy origin.

All in all, Slayer and Manson know what their fans want and do not disappoint.

• Staff
• Verified User
• Anonymous