Mechanical Animals - Concept

Concept

"If 'Antichrist Superstar' was sort of my comparative fall from grace, Lucifer being kicked from heaven, this next record is about what happens on Earth now, (It's about) sort of trying to fit into a society that thinks it's full of emotions and that you're a callous person, when in fact you're the one that actually has all these feelings and it's the world that's kind of numb to them. It's almost the antithesis of what I just did."

—Marilyn Manson discussing the then unnamed album's principal motif with MTV News.

In the album, Manson takes on two roles, being a substance addicted glam rocker and a gender ambiguous Alien called Omēga (pronounced oh-mee-gah) who, much like David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust, falls down to earth, is captured, placed with a band called The Mechanical Animals and turned into a rock star product. He has become numb to the world, either lost or high in outer space or the Hollywood Hills, through excessive drug use as a coping mechanism with his life as a product of his corporate masters. Manson's other role is that of Alpha who is based on himself and his experiences around the conclusion of the Antichrist Superstar tour/era. Acting as Omēga's foil, Alpha's emotions have only begun seeping back. Vulnerable and trying to relearn how to use them properly, he despairs about how little emotion other people feel, observing them to be "mechanical animals". Both are looking to come back into the world - looking among the mechanical animals for the thing they need to make themselves whole. They call it Coma White, unsure if she is real or simply a drug induced hallucination. Subsequently, seven of the fourteen songs are from the perspective, lyrically and musically, of Omēga and his fictional band The Mechanical Animals, while the other seven are by Alpha (Marilyn Manson). The Omēga songs are typically those most nihilistic and superficial lyrically, such as "The Dope Show", "User Friendly" and "New Model No. 15". The album artwork features a dual liner note book, in which one half has lyrics for the Omēga songs, and when flipped over, has those for the Alpha songs.

Marilyn Manson later noted in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine that "Mechanical Animals was to represent the point where the revolution got sold out, a hollow shell of what the essence of Marilyn Manson was. It was a satire, and a lot of people interpreted it as 'This is what he really is.' I was making a mockery of what I was, taking a shot at myself."

After the release of Holy Wood (In the Shadow of the Valley of Death), Marilyn Manson revealed that his concept album trilogy is an autobiographical story told in a reverse timeline (chronologically reverse from their actual release dates). That means Holy Wood opens the storyline followed by Mechanical Animals and concluded with Antichrist Superstar. Furthermore, though Antichrist Superstar and Mechanical Animals made sense as individual concept albums on their own, there was a hidden overarching story running through the three releases.