Marilyn Manson released One Assassination Under God – Chapter 1 on November 22, 2024. The 12th studio album was the first issued through Nuclear Blast and followed 2020’s We Are Chaos. Its central partnership was familiar: Manson and Tyler Bates wrote and produced the record together, returning to a collaboration that had already yielded two albums.
The album arrived with a Bill Yukich-directed music video for its opening song, “One Assassination Under God.” Yukich also directed the videos for all three advance singles, carrying the visual campaign through to release day.
Bates had co-written and produced The Pale Emperor in 2015 and Heaven Upside Down in 2017. Drummer Gil Sharone, who played on both, returned for this record as well. Manson handled vocals, while Bates played guitars, bass, keyboards and GuitarViol. That put much of the instrumental work in the hands of the same two musicians who had helped shape those earlier records. Sessions ran from April 2023 to April 2024, primarily at Bates’s Los Angeles studio, The Abattoir, with additional recording at NRG and EastWest.
One detail of Bates’s guitar setup connected those projects, too. In a May 2026 interview with Guitar World, he explained that a Peavey amplifier had appeared on every Manson album he had made. He valued the definition it preserved under distortion, allowing small details in his playing to remain audible. “It’s really well articulated when it’s not super-distorted,” he said. The amplifier also served his film work, where he used it for more atmospheric guitar parts.
Bates described the working routine behind the music as well. He told the magazine that he and Manson had made two albums back to back, recording entirely during daylight hours, with Manson sober throughout those sessions.
Listeners first heard the renewed collaboration through “As Sick as the Secrets Within,” released on August 2, 2024. It was Manson’s first release through Nuclear Blast, introducing the label partnership before the album’s title and release date were announced. “Raise the Red Flag” followed two weeks later, with a physical maxi-single limited to 3,000 copies worldwide alongside its streaming release. On September 27, “Sacrilegious” accompanied the formal album announcement.
Those three songs became part of a nine-track record running roughly 43 minutes. The sequence opened with the title track and ended with “Sacrifice of the Mass,” the album’s longest song at six minutes and 15 seconds. The advance singles were spread through the running order, with “Raise the Red Flag” placed immediately before that extended closing track.
Manson presented the album as part of a larger work. In a release-day social media message quoted by Revolver, he called it “the first half of my story.” One Assassination Under God – Chapter 2 followed in August 2026, again co-written and co-produced with Bates.
