It's called "Antichrist Superstar",and when it was released last fall, it was the third-best selling album in America. Just behind Celine Dion and Kenny G. It is extremely unlikely that one person bought all 3 albums.

The band is called Marilyn Manson and that's the scary-looking male singer/songwriter's nom de rock as well. The music--a throbbing, creepy industrial assault on the sences-is not for the faint of heart,or,for that matter, the Sunday churchgoer. With Nine Inch Nails having paved the way- and NIN's Trent Reznor co-producing "Antichrist Superstar" for his label, Nothing,-Marilyn Manson is poised to follow the leader.

"The point has always been to take over the mainstream",says Manson, speaking with a slight monotone drawl. "To see if we can change the status quo of what music is. There's a lot of people who have gone most of the way, but I've always planned on going all the way. It's actually gotten more and more extreme as we go along. for anyone who doubts the intergrity of the band, I don't think they can contest the value of what's being said. It hasn't been watered down."

"The only way you can really make a difference is if you have everyone listening, and I've always felt that art,music and literature,are the only things that really change society. It's not about politics. I believe very strongly in what I am saying and I want as many people to hear it as possible." What's the boy saying?

In "Irresponcible Hate Anthem" he's railing"Let's just kill everyone and let god sort em out"(Metallica used this riff once before,too.) "with out the threat of death there's no reason to live at all", he decides in "The Unflinching God"*really, 'The Reflecting god'*. In "Man that you Fear", Manson spurts"I hate it all and I have no choice but to/I'll make everyone pay and you'll see/You can kill your self now/because your dead". *now we all know that these aren't the true lyrics, this is a perfect example of the press changing things to seem worse than they really are*

"Antichrist Superstar is kind of how I define the more nihilistic, hopless element of my own personality", says Manson. "It's when you've finally given up on the world and you only want to see it's destruction". The record is about real struggle and a transformation from being a very vulnerable worm and becoming an angel-the moment of harnessing your power is becoming this Antichrist Superstar personality". Call it Lucifer rising.

Less than a year ago, the band was playing clubs like Saratoga Winners, but not anymore. "We've moved up to the more bombastic venues, more suitable to the music" says Manson.

Manson is a 27-year-old Floridian who favors garish, androgynous makeup and grotesque imagery-Alice Cooper for a new generation, but, perhaps, without the showbizzy shtick and the regular guy alter ego. The other players in his band have also,mostly,taken names that combine models/actresses with famouse killers. Twiggy Ramirez plays guitar, Madonna Wayne Gacy is on keyboards and loops, and Ginger Fish is on drums; new guitarist Zim Zum replaced Daisey Berkowitz. Manson and Gacy are the only Original members.

Manson shed his real name,Brian Parker,*Warner* sometime ago. "it was a symbolic departure from my past and the values I had grown up with", says Manson, on the phone during a tour stop. He grew up attending a Christian School; he's now a reverend in the church of Satan. "For years I was terorozed into believing...all these prophecies of rapture and, finally, after years of it not happening, I started to realize that it was a lie. I wanted to find the truth. As an adult, I've become the things that scare me most as a child, as a payback to those who terrified me. Their fear of an antichrist is what created it".

"antichrist Superstar" the bands second full length album (featuring the sardonic, cacophonic single, "Beutiful People"), is a muti-layered conceptual affair.

"Antichrist Superstar' was taken from a lot of dreams that I'd been having over the past six or seven years", he says. Other things had to happen "in a certain order to make 'Antichrist Superstar' as powerful as it needed to be. The first two albums were stepping stones to get to this point".

Indeed, the early Manson-formed in fort Lauderdale in 1990-seemed more a one-trick, shock-value machine, with image outstripping the music. Manson concurs, saying he first wanted to grab people's attention, then craft "the statement". Still, C.Delores Tucker-along with Willian Bennet, the USA's self appointed voices of morality in music-was apalled enough by their EP, "Smells Like Children", to call it "the dirtiest,nastiest porno record directed at youth that has ever hit the market".

Image and music have finally caught up to each other-like em' or not. "Ther should go hand-in-hand," says Manson. "This record is so strong that there's nothing I can do to detract from it. If the music wasn't there, there would be no reason for me to even have this conversation."

So, what's the concept?
"I relate a lot to the story of Lucifer in the Bible, as in the fallen angel who was cast out of heaven for wanting to be God. The Antichrist is the collective disbelief in God, and things in this record awaken that in people. It makes them realize that they can believe in themselves-which to Christianity is the apocalype because that is people taking away from their God."

Even when Marilyn Manson was more, shall we say, musically suspect (possibly evil, but also clownish), the MM name and mug was plastered on many teenager's T-shirts.

"I'm going to guess that it's a badge of rebellion,"Manson says. "Because Marilyn Manson is pretty much the closest to that they can get." His badges as a kid:Kiss,Alice Cooper,Bowie,Black Sabbath.

There is, of course a question about how close the onstage Manson is to the offstage Manson. Manson says, as a kid, he was let down to find out that Alice Cooper, as much as he admired him, was a regular guy offstage. "Marilyn Manson is all encompassing,"Manson insists. "There's no turning that off and becoming an everday guy."

Is he evil?
"I'm not going to come up to somebody in the street and smash a beer bottle on their head. There is a time and a place for everthing...Good and evil are what you like and don't like, different tastes."

Finally, a line for the history books:
"I mean the Beatles were bigger than Jesus, but we're definetely bigger than Satan."