Heaven Upside Down is the tenth studio album by American rock band Marilyn Manson. It was released on October 6, 2017, by Loma Vista Recordings and Caroline International. The record had the working title Say10 and was initially due to be issued on Valentine's Day. However, the release was delayed by numerous events, most notably the death of Marilyn Manson's father, Hugh Warner, who died during production and to whom the album was later dedicated. The record has many of the musicians who performed on the band's previous album, The Pale Emperor (2015), including the producer Tyler Bates and the drummer Gil Sharone. Despite Manson's early implications, long-time bass guitarist Twiggy Ramirez did not participate on the album. He left the group following a sexual assault allegation by a former girlfriend.
"We Know Where You Fucking Live" was released as a single in September, shortly followed by "Kill4Me", which became the band's highest-peaking entry on Billboards Mainstream Rock Chart. The music videos for the album had celebrities including Johnny Depp, Courtney Love and Lisa Marie Presley. The single "Tattooed in Reverse" also entered the mainstream rock chart, making Heaven Upside Down the band's first album since Mechanical Animals in 1998 to chart more than one song there.
The album received positive reviews from music critics upon release, with several publications saying it continued a creative resurgence that began with the previous album. It was also a commercial success, debuting at number eight on the Billboard 200 and charting in the top ten in most of the major markets. In Australia, it was the band's highest-charting album since Mechanical Animals, and its first top 10 studio album in the United Kingdom since The Golden Age of Grotesque in 2003.
Manson suffered several injuries that delayed the Heaven Upside Down Tour. The band embarked on two co-headlining tours with Rob Zombie: Twins of Evil: The Second Coming Tour and Twins of Evil: Hell Never Dies Tour. To promote the former, the two bands collaborated on a cover version of The Beatles song "Helter Skelter". Manson issued three other cover versions on soundtracks during the album's promotional cycle: "Stigmata", "God's Gonna Cut You Down" and "Cry Little Sister".
Background and recording
Marilyn Manson met Tyler Bates, the score composer of the TV series Californication, while playing a fictionalized version of himself in the season finale of the sixth season of the series. The two then collaborated on the band's ninth studio album, the blues-influenced The Pale Emperor (2015), which was described by numerous publications as the best album the band had released in over a decade. In July 2016, Manson received the 'Icon Award' at the APMAs, where he revealed several details about the follow-up, such as its working title of Say10 and a tentative Valentine's Day release date. He explained that the title originated from a note written in one of his workbooks from his time as a student at GlenOak High School. Manson doubted whether Bates would collaborate with him again following The Pale Emperor, saying relations between the pair deteriorated to such an extent during the supporting The Hell Not Hallelujah Tour that Manson threatened Bates on-stage with a box-cutter knife.
During the tour, Manson regularly shattered glass bottles on-stage so he could cut himself. Bates, who recently announced his leaving the tour to pursue other projects, an announcement that he said saddened Manson, confronted the vocalist during a concert when he realized the shards of glass were hitting drummer Gil Sharone. Manson responded by threatening Bates with a box-cutter, to which Bates replied "You fucking come near me and I'll kill you with that box cutter". Despite the confrontation, Bates agreed to work with the band, and renamed his music publishing company Box Cutter Music in honor of the incident.
On May 8, 2017, Manson announced the album had been renamed Heaven Upside Down, and said recording had been completed. He elaborated on the meaning of the new title: "I was going to call the record SAY10, but I didn't feel that that defined the album. I had the lyrics written for the song 'Heaven Upside Down', and I thought that defined the record more so because of the idea of time as a flat circle, constellations being defined by the negative space—the blackness; the idea of looking at something from an opposite point of view."
As was the case with The Pale Emperor, Manson and Bates worked on the record while the latter was composing score material for the American television series Salem; the third season of which featured Manson as a recurring cast member. Parts of the album were recorded in Louisiana, where he was filming scenes for the series. The record was produced solely by Bates, and recorded at Bates's Studio City recording facility Abattoir Studios, with live drums recorded by The Pale Emperor contributor Gil Sharone. Despite initially suggesting that longtime bassist Twiggy would contribute to the writing and production of the album, Manson later confirmed that he was invited but did not participate during sessions at Bates's recording studio. According to Manson, after listening to pre-recorded basslines performed by Bates, Twiggy responded by saying he would be unable to "play them any better, and that the record sounded great [as it was]".
Manson and Bates largely improvised during their writing sessions. Bates said that songs were created "out of a conversation, essentially, just between [Manson] and I, and we make it pretty much on the spot. It's me making music right from my head, and the lyrics are developed by Manson right there in the studio with me." Manson described the collaborative process between the two as being "a very intimate, personal experience. ... We sit across from each other, with headphones on, we look each other in the eye when we're writing." Manson opted not to record his vocals from inside a vocal booth, instead recording them while sitting at Bates's mixing console; the majority of vocals on the album were recorded in single takes, with minimal overdubbing. Bates sought to incorporate the intensity of the band's live performances into the album's production, describing the record as "intense, fun and violent. It's more immediate than The Pale Emperor, much more aggressive, and definitely much more imbued with Manson's fucked-up humor." He also said:
Composition and style
Manson initially described Say10 as being a musical departure from The Pale Emperor, saying it was "pretty violent in its nature for some reason, and it's not emotional in the same way. It's got a chip on its shoulder." He called it "by far the most thematic and over-complicated thing that I've done", and indicated it would contain some of his most politically-charged lyrics, but denied the political lyrical content related to the election of Donald Trump by saying most of its lyrics were written before the 2016 US presidential election. He said he would not be voting in that election, and believed that – as an artist – he could make more of a difference with his music than with a vote.
Manson dubbed Heaven Upside Down his "most precise and well-thought-out work", and compared its lyrics to those of Holy Wood (In the Shadow of the Valley of Death) (2000), noting the majority of lyrics on both records were initially written as prose. He additionally described it as a concept album, and contrasted it with The Pale Emperor: "The last album was Faust, Mephistopheles. For me, this would be Pilgrim's Progress". Lyrical themes and subject matter on the record range from politics, violence, sex and romance, chaos and isolation, and capitalism, religion, drugs, paranoia, fear and mental illness. Manson characterized Heaven Upside Down as a hard rock and punk rock album, in the vein of Killing Joke, Joy Division, Bauhaus, and David Bowie's Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps). Reviewers have additionally defined it as an industrial metal, glam rock and gothic rock record.
The title of opening track "Revelation #12" is a reference to both the Book of Revelation and the Beatles song "Revolution 9". "We Know Where You Fucking Live" was the first song Manson and Bates recorded for the album; its lyrics reference state surveillance and drone warfare. "Saturnalia" was the final song written for the album. Manson described its lyrics as being "the real heart of the record." He was unaware of the severity of his father's terminal illness until two days before he died, on July 7, 2017, the same day the band finished recording "Saturnalia". Its lyrics contain numerous astrological and mythological references, specifically the astrological transit of Saturn – Saturn return – and the myth of Saturnus devouring his children. Manson conflated his father's death with the lyrical content: "Seeing my father dying, I felt like that was the circle of life that he'd want me to put the energy of death into rebirth, you know, the snake eating its own tail, Saturnalia, Saturninus, that whole concept." "Je$u$ Cri$i$" was described by Manson as "my résumé ... It's basically something I would say with a [sarcastic] shrug when someone asked me, 'What do you do?' 'Well, I write songs to fight and fuck to'."
Release and artwork The album was not released on Valentine's Day, prompting increasingly aggressive responses from fans on social media platforms. Manson later explained several factors caused the delay, including Bates' schedule scoring films, Manson being unhappy with the quality of the record by that date, as well as the death of his father, to whom Heaven Upside Down is dedicated. Bates also said recording was delayed due to the band's touring schedule; the pair had completed just six songs before beginning a co-headlining tour with Slipknot in the summer of 2016. At least three tracks were recorded sometime after Valentine's Day: "Revelation #12", "Saturnalia" and "Heaven Upside Down", with the album's name then being changed to the last song title.
Prior to the record's eventual release, Manson posted a series of horror-themed videos on Instagram. The first of these was captioned "6:19. The time has come." Numerous publications hypothesized whether 6:19 referred to a June 19 release date, a Bible verse, or the Eat Me, Drink Me track "If I Was Your Vampire", which features the lyric "6:19 and I know I'm ready". The final video featured the Celebritarian Cross, an inverted variation on the Cross of Lorraine that had previously been used by Manson as a logo for his Celebritarian art movement in 2005; the symbol subsequently appeared on the Heaven Upside Down album cover.
Heaven Upside Down was released worldwide on October 6, 2017, by Loma Vista Recordings in the United States, Caroline International internationally, and in Japan by Loma Vista in cooperation with Hostess Entertainment; Japanese editions contain a Mystery Skulls remix of "Kill4Me" as a bonus track. The booklet was printed on Bible paper, with the lyrics formatted to resemble biblical text. The record was mastered by Brian Lucey, the engineer who masters the majority of Bates's soundtrack work. According to Manson, Lucey was chosen because the album contains "some extreme experiments with sound. We were very particular in not allowing someone else to master it, who might accidentally eliminate them. We've got some very intense, alchemical, scientific, binaural sounds that sometimes even make me have a panic attack while I'm listening to it." These sounds are most prevalent in the title track and "Saturnalia", which Manson highlighted as centerpieces of the record.
Promotion and singles