Marilyn Manson has risen again with new sound and new album The Pale Emperor

One recent night, in a candlelit, marble-plated West Hollywood hotel room, Marilyn Manson reaches into his pocket and flicks open a switchblade. "The Roman emperor Constantius was referred to as the 'Pale Emperor'. He liked to dress up as a woman and [torture] men and have them dance for him," Manson says. "I identify with that petulant pursuit of chaos."

Manson's blade (and his metallic teeth) glints gold in the candlelight. For a moment, it seems as if he might be pondering something sinister. Instead, he looks down at the knife and grins. "I prefer using this to eat oysters."

Nearly 20 years after his 1996 album Antichrist Superstar made him America's most infamous musician, Manson still has the power to unnerve. Yet in person he's droll and self-aware, prone to knife-twirling goofiness and Southern-gentleman affectations. What's even more startling is that, at 46, he has just made one of the best albums of his career.

The Pale Emperor, released last month, is a 10-song LP that's just as quick and ferocious as his knife. The album largely sheds his trademark industrial-music howl, replacing it with slinky, glamorous brooding that evokes goth-punk pioneers such as The Birthday Party and Christian Death.

After his widely praised acting on Sons of Anarchy (where he played a white supremacist gang leader) and a cameo on Eastbound & Down (where he played a schlub in orange shorts and a moppy brown wig), Manson is preparing for a new role: as a musician at the unexpected height of his powers.