Says villain Marilyn Manson: "Sometimes, for me the villain is the guy who has the better costumes and has the girls and the better dialogue in movies and books. It's the more-human person."

Through the years, people who disapprove of Marilyn Manson's dark and gothic metal hijinks have banned him from performing in Louisiana and New Jersey. But June was a banner month for anti-Mansonites. Concert promoters banned Manson from playing at Ozzfest in Rochester, N.Y., and politicians turned him away in Milan, Italy.

Manson puts a brave face on regarding his shut-out of the concert in New York. But for once, his voice sounds tired.

"It's a complete surprise to me -- and in some ways a compliment to the fact that what I do still remains dangerous to the world," he says. "But it's really odd that out of all the bands, they would single me out."

Manson's point here might be that Ozzfest acts include, of course, the headliner, Ozzy Osbourne, the longtime druggie and biter-offer of animal heads, not to mention bands named things such as Cradle of Filth.

It probably does not help Manson's fight in the mainstream that he is a self-described villain who portrays his tour this way:

"It's where theater goes off of the stage and becomes a reality of its own. It's the Nuremberg rally meets Walt Disney on acid. And stripped of religious and political meaning, it becomes its own religion and politics."

Why does he think people ban him?

"They are starting to see my place in the world," he says. "I am a villain. And that doesn't mean ... you have to be the bad guy. Sometimes, for me the villain is the guy who has the better costumes and has the girls and the better dialogue in movies and books. It's the more-human person. It's impossible to achieve the characteristics of heroes, so its easy to be a villain."

Some people do see Manson as a hero, or an anti-hero, at least. He is one of the few people in the music industry who rigorously tests American freedoms of speech and expression. He checks the First Amendment by breaking taboos, and by speaking against government and corporate leaders.

Two years ago, he pointed out in an interview with this publication that you can't buy Marilyn Manson albums at Wal-Mart, but you can buy guns there to shoot people to death with.

More recently, Manson was quizzed about how the Columbine killers were fans of his, and how the community there made Manson a scapegoat. This was in the Oscar-winning documentary, "Bowling For Columbine." Director Michael Moore asked Manson: "If you were to talk directly to the kids at Columbine or the people in that community, what would you say to them if they were here right now?"

Manson responded, "I wouldn't say a single word to them. I would listen to what they have to say, and that's what no one did."

Now, Manson says: É" `Bowling for Columbine' marked a point where people who didn't know my music got to hear what I have to say, and I proved I was a survivor and I wasn't going to be shut down."

Manson is just the latest artist to be put on the chopping block. For centuries, artists have been punished by forbidding people in the mainstream.

"Art can't stand on its own," Manson says. "For me, the reaction is just as important as the creation. ... If you're not making something for other people to experience, then I don't think that's art. That's more self-indulgence."

His new, hit album, "The Golden Age of Grotesque," spins like a gothic-noise, rock screamer that lives in a lustful, nightmarish dream state; its a view of the world from the fictional points of view of children and persecuted people of Weimar Berlin, who were then called "degenerates."

The album is about spitting in the face of fear, he has said. The impetus for this musical approach was fueled by his boredom with everything.

"When I sat down to write the record," Manson says, "I'm sitting there thinking: `I've done everything, I've said everything. Nothing excites me in entertainment and art. I need to make a change.'

"I just kind of threw away all the rules that I had for myself," he says. "The cadence. The rhythm of my voice. The guitars. All the approaches, I did them different. I often brought in ideas, like, `I want this to sound like a burning piano.' It wasn't as easy as playing a piano, because it was a visual. It might be a guitar that sounds like that."

Manson experimented with nonmusicians.

"Sometimes, it was like making a movie," he says. "I had all these girls come in and recite different reasons for why they would (have sex with) me or anybody, symbolically. It was like casting. It wasn't musical at all. I had to get them to say something honest, so I had to push them toward that.

"It was strange circumstances. There was a lot of weird, decadent things going on. A lot of absinthe. Sometimes, I would listen to just the audio from porno movies in my headphones, instead of my own vocals, when I was singing, just to see what it would bring out.

The album debuted at No. 1.

The banning of his concerts, he says, "compliments the inspiration to the record, being Berlin and degenerative artists who were persecuted before the city was destroyed. When this happens, it couldn't be more ironic to the themes of the record."

Manson says he doesn't mind the loss of privacy he experiences by depositing his personal life into his work.

"To me, all of it is being part of Marilyn Manson, whether it's doing an interview, or doing a performance, or singing a song, painting a picture, or recording an album," he says. "It's making your art your lifestyle, and your lifestyle your art."

Isn't it difficult for Manson to be bored with everything in art and entertainment?

"Yeah, you can come to the end of everything and the history of art, but that's where Dada and all these childish approaches save things," he says.

"This record is very reckless. It's different than nihilistic, because it's more of a there's-no-tomorrow-so-let's- enjoy-today (attitude). I know people are going to give me (grief), anyway, so I might as well enjoy it as much as I can."

Enjoying his role as antagonist is one thing. But he's a natural at it, he says.

"You can be pissed off and be good at it, and it doesn't have to be fake," Manson says. "That's why that line is `We don't rebel to sell, it just suits us well.'

He rebels, also, because he's annoyed.

"People always ask me: `What could you be bothered by, you have success, you have this and that?' And that's kind of a real laugh for me, because I couldn't be more bothered by everything."

Suddenly, he laughs. But he's asked, doesn't being bothered by everything lead to a crappy life?

"Yeah," he says, "but the point is that you can find amusement in it, and fighting back against things, and making it who you are, you know? If you're going to be beaten down, be good at it."