MARILYN MANSON released their second album, "Antichrist Superstar," on October 8th, 1996 through Nothing and Interscope, recorded across eight months at Nothing Studios in New Orleans and produced by the band's frontman with Sean Beavan, Dave Ogilvie and Trent Reznor. A rock opera and the first part of a trilogy completed by "Mechanical Animals" and "Holy Wood," it follows a demagogue who seizes power from humanity and triggers an apocalypse — Nietzsche filtered through industrial metal. The sessions were poisoned by constant drug use and sleep deprivation, deliberately engineered to match the material; founding guitarist Daisy Berkowitz was fired partway through and never returned. NINE INCH NAILS players Robin Finck, Danny Lohner and Chris Vrenna all contributed. Seventy-two minutes long, it debuted at number three on the Billboard 200 and made the band America's favourite moral panic for the rest of the decade.
