Rape of the World was a worldwide arena tour by American rock band Marilyn Manson. It was the tenth tour the band embarked upon and the seventh to span over multiple legs. It was launched 10 days ahead in support of their sixth full-length studio LP, Eat Me, Drink Me, which was released on June 5, 2007 in the US. Beginning on May 26, 2007 and lasting until March 2, 2008, the tour included seven legs spanning Europe, Oceania, Japan and North America with a total of 122 completed shows.
For this tour Manson returned to the theatrics of the Grotesk Burlesk Tour, some influenced by Alice in Wonderland. These are the elements contained in the shows:
On some occasions, the stage is filled with (presumably fake) candles during the opening song "If I Was Your Vampire".
During the first five legs of the tour, during "The Fight Song", the stage was set up like a boxing ring, and Manson wore a boxer's entrance robe. The microphone hung from the ceiling like a ring announcer's microphone.
During "The Dope Show", the line "the drugs, they say, are made in California" would sometimes be changed to include the name of the city or country it's being performed in (these lyrical changes were not new to this tour however). On most occasions, the name of the city is shown on the screen in the back along with the word "Drugs". A newer addition to the song's performance, beginning at the Halloween show at The Palms, was Manson singing part of The Beatles song, "Happiness is a Warm Gun" before "The Dope Show", and then using the next section of the song as an introduction to "The Reflecting God".
A lifted tile with Manson standing on it, performing "The Reflecting God", in a similar manner much like past performances of "Cruci-Fiction in Space" (from the Guns, God and Government Tour) and "Para-Noir" (from the Grotesk Burlesk Tour).
Backgrounds of interactive animations, including:
"Irresponsible Hate Anthem": A rapid-fire montage of words like "Love", "Hate", "Drugs", "Sex", "God", and "Death", which was later used for "The Reflecting God" instead and replaced with a transcription of a news story about a 2007 school shooting in Finland.
"Just a Car Crash Away": A heartbeat line from a life support monitor which makes two M's across the screen
"You and Me and the Devil Makes 3": A video of Manson's mouth singing, created in the style of the iconic red lips of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. The video also contains clips of the Hindenburg disaster.
"The Dope Show": A continuously rotating pill with "Eat Me" written on the front and the Cross of Lorraine on the back. Later in the tour, to begin the song, a scan of Manson's cocaine-lined American Express Corporate card (with the numbers changed).
Others include the red eyes with hearts from the Eat Me, Drink Me booklet, and the Les Fleurs du Mal (alternate version) painting.
A microphone in the shape of a knife.
A huge chair for "Are You the Rabbit?"
On some occasions, a robot of Evan Rachel Wood entered the stage during "Heart-Shaped Glasses (When the Heart Guides the Hand)". The mannequin would push a cart with a birthday cake and a bottle of Mansinthe placed on it. Also on the table is a camera that Manson used to take a Polaroid photo of the Evan robot, which he would then throw into the crowd. In some performances, Manson would take the head off of the mannequin and sing the song to it, and then take the glasses of it and wear them, throwing them into the crowd. He has also removed the mannequin's arms and put them around himself.
In several shows, red and black confetti is blown over the crowd during "Heart-Shaped Glasses (When the Heart Guides the Hand)". Also during "The Beautiful People", sometimes white confetti is used.
Return of the podium from the Dead to the World Tour and a bible being burnt midway through "Antichrist Superstar".
At the culmination of the show, usually during "The Beautiful People", Manson leaves the stage and performs the song among the crowd by standing on the separation barrier. In an interview with MTV Denmark, Manson said he added the feature "so that the show doesn't become too impersonal".
Various samples of early songs like "Sweet Tooth", "Abuse, Part 1" and "Track 99", but also spoken samples of passages from the film versions of Alice in Wonderland, Lolita and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas are used as interludes while new stage props are set up in between songs.
Initially, Manson took to the stage wearing a leather jacket with cut-off gloves and a black, long-sleeved shirt to perform the opener, "If I Was Your Vampire" and the follow-up, "Disposable Teens". When first performed as an encore on the European tour, Manson took to the stage for either "Are You the Rabbit?" or "The Nobodies" (and in the case of Paris, "EAT ME, DRINK ME"), wearing a striped white-gold, long-sleeved shirt. Manson later replaced the long-sleeve shirt for a black T-shirt with cut off sleeves. When the butcher's knife microphone debuted, Manson performed the first song like this but also wore black, elbow-length gloves. On certain dates, Manson wore silver pants with his black shirt. "If I Was Your Vampire" then began to be performed in a black frilly shirt and a black feather boa and pink gloves for "Are You the Rabbit?".
Following on from his appearance with Alice Cooper, Manson began to take to the stage in a T-shirt depicting a cartoon of a bunny rabbit, or on later occasions, a cut-off T-shirt with a skeleton chest on. Costume changes on these dates after the distinctly nontheatrical European tour first leg featured a top hat and striped pants (occasionally a leather trench coat and jacket) for "mOBSCENE", a jacket with ‘333 HALF EVIL’ patched onto it, and even at some dates, a boxing gown for "The Fight Song" with the iconic twisted heart on the front and the bleeding MM logo on the back, as well as a white jacket, reminiscent of Elvis Presley, for "Rock Is Dead" at later dates. Contrasting these changes, Manson still performed "Antichrist Superstar" in the navy blue-red suit, sometimes changed into a silver version of the rabbit shirt for later performances of "The Beautiful People" on dates on the European tour.
The following list contains the most commonly played songs in the order they were most generally performed:
"If I Was Your Vampire" (Summer European tour and Winter European tour legs only)
"Cruci-Fiction in Space" (Winter North American tour leg only)
Only two venues have been confirmed as filmed for future DVD purposes, the December 15, 2007 performance in Stockholm, Sweden and the October 23, 2007 performance in Osaka, Japan. In September 2009, the band's official message board began taking requests for which songs or particular performances fans would most like to see featured in the film, indicating that the project has not been abandoned and the band has in fact continued to record footage while touring. As of 2013, the project and footage remain archived.
