Except that’s not the last line of the album. “Man That You Fear” follows “The Reflecting God” (wherein the Antichrist Superstar at the height of his power decides to destroy the world of his own creation by "shoot, shoot, shoot"ing until the world gets “smaller” - a typical dying God/Uebermensch at the crest of his power), and in this song he gloats about his coming act - but he does not do it. There are several dozen tracks of silence after the end of “The Man That You Fear”, then one last track, 99, sometimes labeled “Empty Sounds of Hate”:
“Go ahead and build a better messiah,
We can dig another grave.
This is your calling.
If you are hearing this, there is nothing I can do.
Something has grown out of my chest.
I have seen it.
It is hard and cold.
It has been dormant for many years.
I have tried to save you, I could not save you.
This is what you deserve,
this is what we deserve.
This is something we have brought upon ourselves.
We are not a victim, you are not a victim.
we are not a victim, you are not a victim.
God will grovel before me.
God will crawl at my feet.
These are the dying years.
When you are suffering, know that I have betrayed you.”
Thus the album ends as it began, in an eternal return of the meaningless slogan “We hate love/we love hate”. On 2000’s “The Fall of Adam”, Manson would go on to pen the lyric,
[i]"When one world ends,
something else begins,
but without a scream/
Just a whisper because we just/
Start it over again."[/i]
Nietzschean themes tie far more heavily into the triptych (Antichrist Superstar, Mechanical Animals, and Holy Wood) than they do The Downward Spiral. Another example are the titular creatures of the second album of this cycle, “neurophobic and perfect” creatures who are as “hollow as the ‘O’ in God” - they are very much Nietzsche’s Last Men.
There are, of course, Nietzschean themes throughout Manson’s discography (as in “(S)aint” from The Golden Age of Grotesque - “Now I’m not an artist; I’m a fucking work of art” - which parallels a similar, if less verbose, euphemism in The Birth of Tragedy speaking of a similar Dionysiac experience - “Man is no longer an artist; he is a work of art.”). However, the triptych represents a kitch work of an almost metaphysical nature, and deals quite heavily with themes derived not only from Nietzsche, but also Crowley, the Qahballah and the Tarot, and other esoteric schools of thought. Among other parallels I’ve noticed are the three ‘characters’ of the triptych - Adam Kadmon (the Qahbalistic rebel), Omega (the androgynous glam-rocker), and the Antichrist Superstar, who, in a way, mirror the Three Metamorphoses of the Spirit: Adam as the camel, fleeing into the desert - or, on the record, Death Valley - to escape the confines of traditional society; Omega, who openly rebels and confronts these social paradigms; and finally, the lion, the Antichrist, who creates.
The Nachtkabarett - your source for all Manson-related esoterica.