On a Saturday morning at 4 AM, i-D spoke to Marilyn Manson about a new chapter in his life and The Pale Emperor, his most critically acclaimed album in a decade.

It happened while I was finishing recording the record. The record had happened very quickly, over the course of two months or so, and then, because of work - I had jobs going in New York on Sons of Anarchy - the record literally, I believe, took almost nine months, like a child being born. And I guess it made me sort of born again in a strange way. Going back home and going through that, having to deal with my mother's death, it made me grow into a different person. Still the same, but it sort of took me back to where I was when I started, with the same end vision. The difference between a person, who has nothing to lose, and someone who has everything to gain. And I'm someone who has everything to gain at this point.

Yeah, but I don't think it started out that way. Before I graduated my father didn't want me to—I wanted to be a writer—and at the time I was working for them; I was painting the walls. So ironically, I became a writer and a painter, not of walls but of paintings to hang on walls. Strangely enough, the first cover story I wrote was on Katey Sagal and I gave it to him on Christmas because she's on Sons of Anarchy and I thought that was ironic because that was my father's favourite show and I wrote an article on her.

I've been wearing a lot of John Varvatos. Dandy of the Grotesque is making my stage clothes and I'm very much caught up in the combination between the gangster era of America and England and Ireland - Peaky Blinders, the 1920s, Boardwalk Empire, the TV shows I watch - but I think the hooligan look of the 20s is where I'd put myself. Trenchcoats and dishevelled combat boots and very tight leather pants. It's something that I always enjoyed.

I don't even think social media, I think more like the media decease or social decease. Maybe I put a little bit of dirt in there. But it's hard to say. You can't really get your hands dirty. I get really annoyed if I'm talking to somebody and they're texting on the phone, or half paying attention. It's different for me because I have some, probably, scientifically quantifiable diagnosable to understand what goes on inside my head, but it's some form of synaesthesia where I can watch a movie, read a book, and talk to somebody at the same time. That also opens up all my senses so it makes me hyper-sensitive to being in crowds with people that I don't know, which is ironic because of what I do.