Chris Vrenna, the Grammy-Award-winning musician and producer who was most recently the drummer/keyboardist for MARILYN MANSON, has left the band to focus on his growing film and video game scoring, production career and DJ outings as well as work on the forthcoming 2012 TWEAKER release.
“I’m incredibly proud of the work I did with MANSON and look forward to the release of [the new MARILYN MANSON album] ‘Born Villain’. I wish my brothers well, but with the recording largely completed, I felt it was time to return to other facets of my career, which involves production work, film scoring, and future musical collaborations,” explained Vrenna.
Vrenna rose to prominence in the early ‘90s as a full-time member of NINE INCH NAILS, having been a permanent member of Trent Reznor’s band since NINE INCH NAILS’ inception and for the following eight years. His production and programming credits include the aforementioned NINE INCH NAILS, SMASHING PUMPKINS, MARILYN MANSON, GUNS N’ ROSES and most recently work on EVANESCENCE’s self-titled 2011 album. Vrenna is also a sought after remixer working on tracks by U2, NELLY FURTADO, RAMMSTEIN and SLIPKNOT.
I always liked Chris and the his Tweaker project. I think he brings a lot of innovation and maturity to the goth/industrial genre, where others continue to bring stale repetition and silliness.
Manson must be very, very tall from the way Vrenna is looking at him there. I can’t imagine he’d be looking up in that direction for any other reason. Surely he’s not just doing that 15 year old girl pose?
Tweaker is BADASS, as most anything Vrenna does. If rumor can be taken into account, he also contributed some great soundscapes to The Downward Spiral, as well as some great remixes for NIN.
He’s a student at the Voidhead School of Modeling.
Wahaha! Yeah Manson’s really fucked up here because he lost two important players, Ginger Fish and Chris Vrenna, in one year. And he never utilized Vrenna’s abilities properly. Maybe the new album ‘Born Villain’ will have more prominent keyboard work than ‘The High End of Low’ but I doubt it based on what we’ve heard so far…
I don’t know how the fuck Manson is going to tour because I assumed Chris would take over live drums from Ginger Fish (he played drums for Manson’s Against All Gods greatest hits tour in '05)…
Chris was mostly used as a producer during ‘High End of Low’ when they should have hired someone from outside the band to do that and let him focus on keyboard duties and atmosphere.
I’m guessing he was underpaid and fed up with Manson’s bullshit, plus he is a professional and always has a million projects going on.
I’ve heard Twiggy has been sober a year now so I don’t really see how he could get along with Manson these days either. I fear that if he quits as well the band will really be toast.
This is certainly the weakest point in the history of Marilyn Manson.
Oh and PS I could care less about Tweaker or anything else Vrenna does. He’s a perfect sideman which is why I was so psyched he was in Marilyn Manson.
I met him once at a goth club on one of his DJ appearances like a year or two ago, drunk off my ass, for the record. And he seemed nice enough though I was acting a fool and his trashy girlfriend had me ejected from their table and was screaming at me because I had called her a groupie cunt or some such thing. Glad those days are behind me…
He produced a record made by a friend of mine who I collaborated with on a song many years ago.
So I’m two degrees removed from Chris Vrenna, professionally.
I think that Chris like Bill does’nt get enough credit for the sound they brought to each project (NIN/ministry) just look at the lack of interesting grooves from ‘the fragile’ up till ‘dark spoon’ up even though i bet Al & Paul used some left over stuff for darkspoon etc. same with ‘the fragile’. I think that Bill was just as important to ministry as paul same with Chris. Both did way more than drums in the studio (Hell Bill was the aux gtr. player on rape and honey tour to ogre’s ‘unplugged’ playing) with the current re-releases of nin work and trent giving him more credit in the new notes hopefully they can bury the hatchet. I personally, would rather see bill rejoin ministry than Paul.
p.s. Fun-fact Bill was credited before paul in ministry world (revco '86 single) Paul did’nt have his name on a record till stigmata/R and Honey
Oh, duane? well right after that we were blessed with the (un) holy amount of live tapes and hell i was able to answer most of my questions there plus, I just did’nt feel like anyone else was to into it you know grmpy? do you have any specific questions? there’s a few about just touring and recording of cli-tour i’d like to have answer are you guy’s interested still?
Oh, duane? well right after that we were blessed with the (un) holy amount of live tapes and hell i was able to answer most of my questions there plus, I just did’nt feel like anyone else was to into it you know grmpy? do you have any specific questions? there’s a few about just touring and recording of cli-tour i’d like to have answer are you guy’s interested still?
er yeah, Duane, no I didn’t have any specific questions, but i was interested in the questions that others asked, but no biggie. wasn’t sure if i had missed it since i haven’t been attending prongs like a faithful disciple these last couple of months.
thanks though.
Late,
grmpysmrf
Chris did produce the new debut album of Army of the Universe, who recently opened for KMFDM on their 2011 tour. Pretty good stuff. It may not be in everyone’s taste, but the record was on repeat in my car for quite a while…
