Portrait of an American Family

Every parent's nightmare and every teenager's dream band, Marilyn Manson take no prisoners on their blistering and brutal Trent Reznor-produced debut. Aiming to shock and rock simultaneously, Portrait scores high marks in both arenas. Manson and his grand grimoire take Alice Cooper's tongue-in-cheek mix of glam and death rock to the nth degree with their vision of youth gone wild, personified on cuts like "Cake and Sodomy" and "Lunchbox", a schoolyard revenge fantasy gone horribly awry. One of the most original, hardest rocking albums recorded in the 1990s, Portrait of an American Family is a hallmark of the industrial/metal genre, but not for those who are easily offended. --Gail Worley