‘Born Villain’ is the eighth full-length studio album by Marilyn Manson.

It was released on May 1, 2012 by Cooking Vinyl Records and Manson’s own vanity label Hell.

Interviews with the frontman described that the record would be in a heavier tone than that of previous works, describing the sound as a “suicide death metal” style.

Along with the album ‘Born Villain’, a short film directed by actor Shia LaBeouf, was a promotional “trailer” released concomitantly for the then-upcoming album.

The idea for the film originated after Manson and LaBeouf struck up a friendship at a concert of The Kills.

During promotion of the album and the run up to it’s release – Manson spoke about his comeback.

“It takes a lot to humble yourself and admit that you’re making a comeback, but that’s what it has to be described as when you’ve gone through a period where you’ve not been everything you’ve supposed to be. Not ‘I’m not what I’m supposed to be’, because I don’t want to retrace the past, more ‘I’m not what I need to be’.

Depressingly, Manson has said that he tried writing from his personal life in the two records prior to Born Villain, both of which commercially flopped. “I was in a place where I could not figure out how to deal with being me,” he said later in the interview with Loudwire.com. “Me the person—not me as Marilyn Manson. Sometimes you don’t know how the [expletive] to be yourself, because you’re too confused by the circumstances you’re in. Everyone goes through that…I need to be an outlaw, I need to be a villain, I need to be the person that you don’t want to [expletive] with so people don’t [expletive] with what I do.”

Born Villain entered the writing phase during “The High End of Low Tour” in 2009. On December 3, 2010, it was announced that Marilyn Manson had parted ways with long-time label Interscope Records, stating “we’ve even started writing new songs on the road, so I think people can expect a new record a lot sooner than [you think].”

In an interview with Loudwire, April 2012, Marilyn Manson said about the album:

“Restriction creates the desire to have the necessity or the determination or confidence to deal with your situation. It’s like a zombie movie, it’s like being in prison, it’s being stuck with one choice, survival. That’s what this record is. I was given a choice. When I started making this record, I decided that I didn’t like who I was. I didn’t want to be who I used to be. I wanted to be who I knew I could be, and that’s an evolving process. But the whole key to it is that if you stagnate, if you become something that no longer transforms, there’s nothing that’s inspirational about it. Whether it’s nature and you see a peacock, or whatever it is, you pick who you’re going to be in life and you need to be confident about it and stick with your gut instinct and don’t waiver. It took me completely stripping my life away, moving into a place with black floors and white walls, putting all my things in storage and just taking my movies, my instruments, my cats and realizing, “I don’t need anything else. All I need to do is fill this [room] full of something.” I’m trying to take things back to the beginning. I was not calculating that way, I simply needed to realize that this is life. I needed to realize what I wanted out of life. I suddenly realized that I was the one who sat and drew my first flyer. I went to Kinko’s, I printed it out, I put it on cars myself personally and I didn’t have any songs at the time. With this record, I’ll always remember more than any others. They weren’t happy memories all the time. Everything has to be ups and downs or you’re not an artist. If everything is happy, then who gives a shit, or if it’s just a straight line, I won’t give a shit either. If it’s down, which is sometimes where I was more often than up, it’s not inspiring. So I just wanted to make something that would make people feel something. I was playing it to people that were my friends. Some of them never heard my music before, never liked my music, whatever the situation was but it’s a challenge and I love a challenge. I had forgotten how much I love a challenge’.

Born Villian is out now.