You’ll all be delighted to know I have a new laptop. I am. I’m a little relieved.

What else has been up? Well, as I mentioned before, I went to see Marilyn Manson on monday. It was pretty raw/nasty/excellent until the end, when it was just nasty. I was there reviewing for Drum Media Perth. Rather than going over the whole thing again, here’s what I wrote for them:

From The Drum Media Perth (8/10/09)

One of the pleasures of a show like this is watching the suburbanite Goths filter in. Not the PVC-clad, Sin-attending, properly subcultural Goths, but the ones who buy black shirts from K-Mart and rip them. People who, I must shamefully admit, were dressed much like me on this night. Luckily there’s not much gothic about Challenge Stadium’s massive basketball court-style arena anyway, even when covered in enough smoke machine fog to give an entire primary school athsma.

First to get this misfit crowd’s attention were local masters of horror-laden rock Fear Of Comedy, playing their comeback show two years on from a volatile breakup. Despite going onstage 20 minutes before the advertised start time and taking a song or two to adjust their scale from the Hydey back room to the stadium sized stage, they absolutely nailed their set. Frontman Laith Tyranny threw himself around the stage with a manic theatricality that went on to show up even the headliner and by the time they knocked out March Of The Blood, he was strutting around the stage like an evil, epilepsy-prone incarnation of Bono, pronouncing his lines upon the audience like blasphemous sermons. With the crowd well and truly on their side by the end of the show, this was the best relaunch they could have hoped for.

After a short break, out came Marilyn Manson. Touring behind an “unappreciated” (some would say “shit”) album and reunited with original guitarist Twiggy Ramirez, the band incited the moshpit as much as they could for a Monday night in Perth with a set list much more focused on their brutal, audience-baiting theatrics than the lovelorn slow jams of two years ago.

It was a fast paced shock rock thrill ride for most of the set, but the blistering pace and 14 hour flight from America caught up with them toward the end of the show. To their credit, Manson’s showmanship covered this up until their final two songs, Rock And Roll N*gger and The Beautiful People, which they should have just dropped.Following the blistering start, it seemed impossible for the show to end so limp. Hopefully next time they come, the band will be better rested and will see the show through to a more satisfying conclusion.

He played some songs I’d forgotten; The Love Song was assaulting, Irresponsible Hate Anthem was moshtastic (there’s just something about a song which has a pre-chorus consting of the singer screaming “FUCK IT! FUCK IT! FUCK IT!”) and The Dope Show took me back to being 17 again. Even some of the new songs were good. Sure, I used his new rock ballad as a toilet break, but I felt bad about it.

And now I’m going to stop ranting about Marilyn Manson before his “influence” on my show starts showing up as an interview question.