Rock/metal icon Marilyn Manson has released an expanded edition of his acclaimed new album, One Assassination Under God – Chapter 2, available digitally now worldwide via Nuclear Blast Records.
The newly expanded release adds the previously unreleased song “You Can’t Die Young” to the album’s original nine tracks, offering another piece of Manson‘s latest creative chapter.
Co-written and co-produced with longtime collaborator Tyler Bates, One Assassination Under God – Chapter 2 arrived earlier this month and continued the story begun with 2024’s One Assassination Under God – Chapter 1. The record features singles ‘Exit Wound’ and ‘Front Toward Enemy’, as well as album opener ‘Unalive,’ which was accompanied by an official music video directed by Anthony Silva.
The arrival of the expanded edition comes as Marilyn Manson is in the midst of a massive North American co-headline tour with Rob Zombie, with The Hu and Orgy appearing on select dates. With numerous shows already sold out and tickets moving quickly across the remaining dates, the run continues through September before Manson returns for a series of headline performances and festival appearances this fall.
Fans are also invited to enter the virtual One Assassination Under God art exhibition, featuring a collection of original visual works alongside the music created to accompany them, with audio commentaries by Marilyn Manson. Includes added commentary for the new, previously unreleased song “You Can’t Die Young.”
Art-rock eminemce Peter Gabriel is right smack in the middle of releasing his new album o\i. It’s been coming out in installments all year, with Gabriel releasing a new song on the night of every full moon. One month after the 10-minute epic “One by One,” he’s back with “Looking For the Happy,” which clocks in at a relatively brisk eight and a half minutes. It’s a lush, expansive synth-funk number about searching for joy an an internet age. As someone who once owned a Peter Gabriel CD-Rom, I am bummed to think about this guy having to function on the social media landscape in any way. Here’s what Gabriel says about the song:
We’ve got lots of big names to cover this week, from space-metal royalty, to a German thrash institution, to Britain’s atmospheric standard bearers. It should all make for great listening while you hope no other cherished celebrities born in the 1940s leave us this year (Timothy Dalton must be protected at all costs!).
—
Exumer – Death Mask Messiah
The German speed-thrash masters have returned with their first album since 2019’s Hostile Defiance. I look forward to seeing them again at Maryland Deathfest, where just like in 2017, they’ll be on the same bill with Exhumed. No grave is safe next spring!
British-atmospheric-black-metal excellence. This is the band’s eight full-length album, one that showcases Fen‘s talent for creating haunting atmospheres without losing sight of the aggression and power that keeps the music exciting. Check out “Tectonic” and you’ll catch my drift right away.
A tribute and a triumph to all that was and what still can be. Marrow Deep is a heavy album in multiple ways, the first Mastodon album without Brent Hinds, and one that examines and exorcises grief in all its forms. But even with its inspirations put aside, Marrow Deep bears a fresh and heavy quality that recalls a force and fire that Mastodon hasn’t quite summoned since the early days of Remission and Leviathan. But it’s delivered in a way that maintains all the exploring and maturing the band has done since then — making it a truly essential addition to their legendary sonic canon. God damn, “Your Ghost Again” is so good.
Thrasy, crushing death metal from New Mexico. I remember the band’s 2023 album totally ripping, and Existence is Corruption shows no sign of creative or destructive decay. Assigned listening for fans of Vader, Asphyx and Jungle Rot.
You know when members of Desecresy and Nocturnal Graves join forces, you’re in for a dark and deadly good time. The word “cavernous” is perhaps a little overused, but it definitely applies to subterranean offerings like this.
“Undone” is the latest single from alternative metallers ENTHEOS. The track comes by way of the band’s impending new studio offering, Empty On The Inside, set for release on October 23rd via Metal Blade Records. Serving as the definitive centerpiece of the record, the song effortlessly channels the untamed,emotional energy that characterizes the album as a whole.
Comments vocalist Chaney Crabb, “‘Undone is a dark, visceral song that’s about the confrontation of the guilt that you’ve become the person you always feared you’d be. It’s the grief of realizing that you cannot turn back time and change the things you’ve destroyed. Lyrically, it’s incredibly raw and we feel that musically, it matches the lyrical content perfectly.
“We’ve wanted to experiment with more of an industrial sound for a long time and writing this song came incredibly naturally to us. Though it may be one that surprises people who listen to our band, it’s one of the most ‘true to ourselves’ songs we’ve ever written. We can’t wait to expand even more in this sonic territory.“
Watch the band’s previously released video for “Golden Crown” HERE
Empty On The Inside is the most ambitious and fully realized album of ENTHEOS‘ career. Featuring vocalist Chaney Crabb (voice actress for Jill Valentine in Dead By Daylight) and multi-instrumentalist Navene Koperweis (ex-Animals As Leaders, Animosity), alongside guitarists Scott Carstairs (Fallujah) and Michael Stancel (Allegaeon), the record captures the band at their most collaborative and creatively unified.
While earlier material often highlighted the technical brilliance of Crabb and Koperweis, this time all musicians came together as a true unit during the writing and recording process. The result is a more cohesive, focused, and dynamic album, one that still delivers the jaw-dropping musicianship, intricate performances, and progressive intensity the band is known for, while also embracing tighter songwriting, stronger hooks, and a deeper melodic presence. It’s ENTHEOS at their most refined, balancing technical mastery with memorable songwriting in a way the band never has before.
The band notes, “The album is about losing yourself in darkness, confronting that hopelessness and wondering if there’s any way back to being the person you used to be.”
Empty On The Inside was produced by Mark Lewis (The Black Dahlia Murder, Fallujah, Whitechapel) and mastered by Justin Sturtz at Sterling Sound. The album’s striking visual artwork was created by Zac Shiffer (Nine Inch Nails, Behemoth, Soundgarden).
Empty On The Inside will be available on CD jewelcase and across all digital platforms, as well as LP in a gatefold jacket with insert in the following color variants:
Bloodlust Red (US)
Grey w/ Black Splatter (US)
Neon Green + Yellow Marbled (US – Metal Injection Exclusive)
Green and Blue Marbled (EU)
White w/ Red Splatter (EU)
Neon Pink w/ Black Dust (EU)
Fluorescent Pink (Band Exclusive)
Empty On The Inside Track Listing:
01. Hell Is a Part of Me
02. Empty on the Inside
03. Hollow
04. Call My Name
05. Golden Crown
06. Undone
07. Tomblight (feat. Michael Lessard)
08. Pale Faith
09. Never Let Me Go
10. The Earth Will Move
Following their wildly successful North American tour with Jinjer earlier this Summer, ENTHEOS has announced a special record release show in Nashville with more live dates to be announced in the weeks to come.
Every culture tells stories about a forbidden door. Someone is warned not to open it. They are told to stay away, leave the secret untouched, and accept the limits placed before them. Sooner or later, they open it anyway.
The pattern appears so frequently that it cannot be dismissed as coincidence. From ancient myths to Gothic novels and modern thrillers, forbidden curiosity remains one of humanity’s most enduring obsessions.
We are drawn toward what we should not know. The attraction is paradoxical. People often understand the risks involved. The warning itself may be clear. Yet prohibition frequently increases desire rather than diminishing it.
This contradiction lies at the heart of Gothic and noir storytelling. Characters repeatedly cross boundaries that should remain closed. They read forbidden books, enter locked rooms, investigate dangerous mysteries, and pursue truths that ultimately transform them. Sometimes they gain knowledge. More often, they lose certainty.
The fascination persists because forbidden curiosity reflects a tension within human nature itself. We seek security, yet we also crave discovery. We want answers, even when those answers threaten the world we know.
Gothic and noir narratives transform this tension into drama, revealing how the desire to know can become both a path to understanding and a source of destruction.
The Psychology of Forbidden Curiosity
Why Forbidden Knowledge Fascinates Us
Long before Gothic literature existed, myths warned about the dangers of curiosity.
Pandora opened the container she was instructed never to touch. In the Biblical story of Eden, knowledge itself becomes the forbidden object. The French tale of Bluebeard revolves around a locked room that must remain unopened. In every case, curiosity drives the story forward.
What makes these narratives remarkable is that the forbidden object often matters less than the prohibition itself.
A locked door immediately creates a question.
Why is it locked?
The warning generates tension because it transforms ignorance into a challenge. The mind begins imagining possibilities. Fear and fascination become inseparable.
Psychologists sometimes refer to this impulse as an information gap. When people recognize that knowledge exists but remains inaccessible, curiosity intensifies. The greater the mystery, the stronger the desire to resolve it.
Gothic literature understood this principle long before psychology attempted to explain it.
The genre repeatedly places characters before secrets that should remain hidden, then explores what happens when they inevitably seek answers.
The Gothic Invention of Dangerous Curiosity
When Gothic literature emerged in the eighteenth century, forbidden curiosity became one of its defining themes.
Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto introduced readers to hidden passages, mysterious prophecies, and secrets buried within ancient walls. Characters constantly investigate what should perhaps remain unexplored.
The pattern continued throughout the genre.
Ann Radcliffe filled her novels with locked chambers and unexplained events. Matthew Lewis pushed further into transgression through forbidden desires and supernatural horrors. Gothic fiction repeatedly suggested that knowledge carried a price.
These stories emerged during a period shaped by Enlightenment ideals.
Reason promised that the world could be understood through observation and analysis. Gothic writers responded by asking a disturbing question.
What if some truths are better left undiscovered?
The resulting tension gave Gothic literature much of its power.
Curiosity became both heroic and dangerous. Characters sought understanding, yet the knowledge they uncovered often shattered their assumptions about reality, morality, or themselves.
Frankenstein and the Desire to Cross Boundaries
No Gothic novel explores forbidden curiosity more directly than Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.
Victor Frankenstein does not stumble upon dangerous knowledge by accident. He actively pursues it. Obsessed with uncovering the secrets of life itself, he crosses boundaries that previous generations considered sacred.
His curiosity produces extraordinary results.
It also destroys him.
What makes the novel enduringly relevant is its refusal to present curiosity as purely good or purely evil. Victor achieves what many would consider impossible. His tragedy emerges not from seeking knowledge but from failing to understand the consequences of obtaining it.
Shelley recognized something profound about human nature.
The desire to know rarely arrives with equal concern for responsibility. Discovery often moves faster than wisdom.
This insight would echo throughout Gothic and noir fiction for generations.
The question is never simply whether a secret can be uncovered.
The question is whether the person uncovering it is prepared for what follows.
Edgar Allan Poe and the Destructive Power of Curiosity
No writer explored forbidden curiosity more relentlessly than Edgar Allan Poe.
His stories rarely focus on external monsters. Instead, they examine what happens when individuals become unable to resist their own obsessions. The danger often originates within the mind itself.
Poe understood that curiosity can become compulsive.
The desire to know does not always lead toward truth. Sometimes it leads toward self-destruction.
This insight separates Poe from many earlier Gothic writers.
Traditional Gothic fiction often placed characters before mysterious castles, secret chambers, or supernatural threats. Poe moved the mystery inward. His protagonists become fascinated by thoughts, fears, and impulses they should abandon but cannot.
The forbidden door still exists.
It simply leads into the human mind.
The Tell-Tale Heart and the Need to Know
At first glance, The Tell-Tale Heart appears to be a story about murder.
It is also a story about curiosity.
The narrator becomes obsessed with the old man’s eye. He studies it, watches it, and gradually allows a single detail to dominate his entire perception of reality. The eye becomes a mystery that demands resolution.
Reason eventually collapses beneath obsession.
After committing the murder, the narrator encounters a second mystery: the sound of the beating heart. Whether the sound is real or imagined matters less than the psychological process behind it.
The narrator cannot stop investigating it.
Instead of escaping suspicion, he becomes fascinated by the possibility that the sound exists. His attention repeatedly returns to the noise until curiosity transforms into confession.
Poe reveals a disturbing truth.
Sometimes people uncover secrets not because they seek justice, but because they cannot tolerate uncertainty.
The narrator destroys himself through the need to know what the sound means.
The Black Cat and the Forbidden Self
If The Tell-Tale Heart examines obsessive curiosity, The Black Cat explores an even darker possibility.
What if the forbidden mystery is yourself?
The narrator repeatedly confronts aspects of his personality he would rather avoid. Violence, cruelty, guilt, and self-destructive impulses emerge gradually throughout the story. He attempts to rationalize his actions, yet every explanation feels increasingly inadequate.
The black cat functions as more than an animal.
It becomes a symbol of uncomfortable self-knowledge.
The narrator tries to escape this confrontation. Instead, the mystery follows him. Each attempt to bury the truth only intensifies its presence until the hidden crime literally reveals itself from behind the wall.
Curiosity here becomes psychological rather than investigative.
The narrator is forced to confront parts of himself that he desperately wants to ignore.
Poe suggests that some of the most dangerous discoveries involve not the outside world but the hidden territories of the self.
The Fall of the House of Usher
In The Fall of the House of Usher, curiosity takes a different form.
The narrator enters a world filled with unanswered questions. The mansion appears alive. Roderick Usher behaves strangely. Madeline’s condition remains ambiguous. Every detail encourages investigation.
Yet clarity never fully arrives.
The story’s power emerges from uncertainty itself.
Readers experience the same temptation that confronts the narrator. We want explanations. We want the mystery solved. Poe repeatedly withholds complete answers, forcing us to remain inside ambiguity.
This strategy reveals something essential about forbidden curiosity.
The desire to know can become more powerful than knowledge itself.
Many Gothic stories revolve around hidden truths. Poe understood that the anticipation of discovery often produces greater psychological tension than the discovery itself.
The closed door fascinates us because it remains closed.
Why Curiosity Becomes Dangerous
The protagonists of Poe’s stories rarely suffer because they lack information.
Their downfall begins when curiosity transforms into obsession.
A healthy desire to understand the world can become destructive when it overwhelms judgment, empathy, or self-awareness. The search for answers gradually becomes more important than the consequences of finding them.
This pattern appears repeatedly throughout Gothic fiction.
Victor Frankenstein seeks forbidden knowledge. Poe’s narrators pursue forbidden thoughts. Investigators in later noir stories chase mysteries that eventually consume them.
The details change.
The psychological mechanism remains remarkably consistent.
Curiosity becomes dangerous when it stops serving understanding and starts serving compulsion.
At that moment, the search for truth begins to resemble addiction.
Jung and the Forbidden Door Within
The enduring power of forbidden curiosity may have less to do with secrets than with self-knowledge.
Swiss psychologist Carl Jung argued that every individual possesses a Shadow: aspects of personality that remain hidden, ignored, or repressed. These qualities are not necessarily evil. They are simply the parts of ourselves we prefer not to acknowledge.
The Shadow remains out of sight.
It does not remain inactive.
Jung believed that people often become fascinated by external mysteries because those mysteries provide a safe way to approach internal ones. Investigating a secret, a crime, a forbidden room, or an unexplained event can become a symbolic journey toward parts of the self that normally remain hidden.
Viewed through this lens, Gothic and noir stories become psychological mirrors.
Characters believe they are pursuing knowledge about the world around them. In reality, they are often moving toward uncomfortable truths about themselves.
The forbidden door exists externally.
The real discovery waits behind it.
Twin Peaks and the Mystery Beneath the Mystery
Few modern works explore forbidden curiosity more effectively than David Lynch’s Twin Peaks.
The series begins with a familiar question.
Who killed Laura Palmer?
Like all great mysteries, the question immediately attracts attention. Viewers want answers. Characters launch investigations. Clues accumulate.
Yet the deeper the investigation progresses, the more the mystery expands.
The search for Laura’s killer gradually reveals hidden desires, buried fears, family secrets, and psychological fractures throughout the entire town. The original mystery becomes a doorway into something much larger.
This structure mirrors the logic of forbidden curiosity itself.
People often believe they are searching for a specific answer. The journey eventually exposes questions they never intended to ask.
Lynch understood that mysteries are rarely about information alone.
They are about transformation.
The person who reaches the answer is rarely the same person who began the search.
Why We Keep Opening the Door
The persistence of forbidden curiosity across centuries suggests that it fulfills a fundamental psychological need.
Human beings are not satisfied with surfaces.
We search for hidden meanings, concealed motives, and explanations that lie beyond immediate appearances. Questions generate tension. Uncertainty creates discomfort. Curiosity promises relief.
Yet Gothic and noir stories repeatedly reveal a paradox.
The answer rarely eliminates uncertainty.
Instead, one revelation often leads to another question. The mystery expands. New possibilities emerge. The search continues.
This may explain why forbidden curiosity remains so compelling.
The goal is not always knowledge itself.
Sometimes the attraction comes from the act of searching. Investigation provides a way to explore fear, desire, guilt, memory, and identity without confronting them directly.
The mystery becomes a safe container for deeper psychological tensions.
The Secret We Are Really Seeking
From Pandora’s box and Bluebeard’s chamber to Poe’s haunted narrators and Lynch’s surreal mysteries, forbidden curiosity has remained one of storytelling’s most enduring themes.
The reason extends beyond suspense.
These stories reflect a conflict that exists within every human being. We desire stability, yet we also seek discovery. We want certainty, yet we cannot resist questioning it. Warnings attract us because they suggest the existence of knowledge just beyond our reach.
The greatest Gothic and noir stories understand that forbidden curiosity is never only about the secret itself.
The hidden room, the mysterious letter, the unsolved crime, or the unexplained disappearance serves a deeper purpose. Each becomes a pathway toward questions about identity, morality, fear, and desire.
We open the forbidden door because we hope to discover something hidden.
What we often discover instead is ourselves.
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If The Psychology of Forbidden Curiosity speaks to your fascination with Gothic literature, noir psychology, and the mysteries hidden beneath ordinary life, explore the Edgar Allan Poets store. Our Gothic-inspired apparel celebrates the questions that refuse to stay buried.
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Frequently Asked Questions
What is forbidden curiosity?
Forbidden curiosity is the desire to seek knowledge, experiences, or truths that have been restricted, concealed, or discouraged. It frequently appears in Gothic and noir storytelling.
Why are people attracted to forbidden knowledge?
Psychologists suggest that inaccessible information creates an information gap that intensifies curiosity. The mind naturally seeks to resolve uncertainty.
Why is forbidden curiosity important in Gothic literature?
Gothic stories often explore the consequences of crossing boundaries and uncovering hidden truths. Curiosity becomes a way to examine fear, desire, morality, and self-knowledge.
How did Edgar Allan Poe portray curiosity?
Poe frequently depicted curiosity as a psychological obsession. His characters become fascinated by mysteries, fears, and impulses that ultimately contribute to their downfall.
What does Jung’s Shadow have to do with curiosity?
Jung argued that people are drawn toward hidden aspects of themselves. Forbidden mysteries often function symbolically as journeys into the unconscious and the Shadow.
On A Violent Power and Bontempi Pop 3, Danz CM treats synthesizers less like collector’s trophies than working machinery, using vintage hardware to build pop that moves, mutates, and occasionally grins at its own oscillations. The equipment may be old, but the decisions feel immediate: basslines snap into position, keyboards dart through the margins, and every unusual texture seems enlisted because it can push the song somewhere useful.
A Violent Power is the straighter shot. Constructed entirely from analogue synths, it runs on a rigid new-wave pulse that suggests Kraftwerk’s immaculate engineering after somebody slipped a little danger into the control room. Berlin and Ladytron provide useful coordinates, particularly in the marriage of cool surfaces and emotional excess, yet Danz gives the track enough pressure to keep the references from swallowing it. The song concerns surrendering to an overpowering emotion, and the arrangement keeps tightening around that idea, adding momentum until submission starts sounding suspiciously pleasurable. Synth lines rise, retreat, and lock together with the tidy aggression of machinery designed for dancing.
Then Bontempi Pop 3 wanders into stranger territory and steals the double single. Its breakbeat shuffles with trip-hop weight while an Italian Bontempi toy organ squeaks, chirps, and zips across the track as though somebody left a children’s keyboard unsupervised in an experimental studio. Broadcast supplies some of its crooked sweetness, while the toy-box melodies carry the idyllic whimsy of Danish synth band Moral, and the repetition has Stereolab’s playful momentum. Just this side of psychedelia, the arrangement keeps producing small surprises without turning into a crowded demonstration of gear. The subject is time: specifically, the desire to escape its disappearing act by occupying the present more completely. That could easily become heavy-handed philosophy, but Danz wisely gives the idea movement rather than solemnity. The beat keeps walking forward while those peculiar keyboards seem determined to distract the clock.
Together, the singles reveal a musician with enough technical command to know that technical command is boring when displayed for its own sake. Live guitars, acoustic drums, motorik rhythms, layered vocals, and banks of synthesizers enter according to function rather than prestige, allowing touches of Nation of Language, Chromatics, Ladytron, Stereolab, and Broadcast to flash past without turning the songs into record-collection bookkeeping.
A Violent Power provides the immediate hook, but Bontempi Pop 3 supplies the mischief. One is streamlined and commanding; the other keeps poking holes in its own geometry.
Listen to A Violent Power/Bontempi Pop 3 below or via the streaming service of your choice here:
Originally from New York’s Catskill Mountains and now based in Los Angeles, Danz CM first built an audience during the 2010s as Computer Magic, operating with a staunch DIY approach that eventually produced records including 2015’s Davos and led to considerable success in Japan, where her music appeared in campaigns for Panasonic and Kewpie Mayo. After retiring the Computer Magic name, she moved further into composition and instrumental arrangement, scoring independent films including While Mortals Sleep and Gary Hustwit’s The Map. During the pandemic she also founded Synth History, the print publication devoted to synthesizers, electronic music, and the people behind them, while continuing to write, produce, mix, art-direct, and release music through her own Channel 9 Records. Recent releases have moved from the ambient abstractions of MYTHS to the krautrock excursions of 2025’s LÄRM!, alongside tours supporting LCD Soundsystem and Ladytron.
Carrie Okay, a new supergroup from LØLØ, salem ilese and Alna, have unveiled their first song, and it is very much on brand for the trio.
Titled ‘High In A Drugstore’, it is a return to the early 00’s era of soft pop-rock, but with a modern twist. It’s flowery, breezy and beautiful, but littered with heartbreak and anguish. The sort of song that finds you in your life at the right time and right place, and makes you realise you’re not the only person going through such pain.
As a first swing, it is as good as it gets.
The band had this to say about it:
Heartbreak makes us do the strangest things. We’ve all had those nights where we’re convinced leaving the house will fix everything, and somehow, we end up in a random place having an existential crisis. Whether it’s hallucinating an ex at your local Denny’s or taking a gummy and ending up out of your mind at a 7-Eleven, you never know where a broken heart will take you. The irony of ending up high in a drugstore… a place where people often go to find a cure, only to realize there’s nothing on those shelves for missing somebody. After writing ‘High in a Drugstore,’ we realized we loved the song way too much to try to pitch it to another artist. So we did what any reasonable girl would do in that moment… start a girl band. We’ve loved every second of creating Carrie Okay and feel so lucky to work with each other and the amazing Andrew Goldstein on creating such a fun project.”
And Andrew had this to add himself about working on the project with the trio:
Working with Carrie Okay is different from working with other artists. Each member is already an accomplished songwriter and artist in their own right, so the creative process moves incredibly fast. I’m constantly in awe of how seamlessly they come up with concepts, lyrics, and melodies, often building three-part harmonies while we’re still writing the song. You get to hear the music come to life in real time. It’s rare to work with three people who are this talented individually, but in Carrie Okay they bring out something really special in each other. It’s an absolute joy to be a part of.”
