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This Valentine's Day, spend the evening with someone you love.

Marilyn Manson.

Mr. Antichrist Superstar will be at the Great Saltair Thursday for an evening concert that will hopefully be more controversial than any Valentine's dinner you could eat with your loved one.

While your loved one might not want to go to the concert with you, at least Manson will be reunited with one of his loved ones that night.

Manson's long-time backing guitarist, Twiggy Ramirez, is touring with Manson for the first time since 2002. The two co-wrote "Antichrist Superstar," "Mechanical Animals," and "Holy Wood (In the Shadow of the Valley of Death)" together and Manson told The Salt Lake Tribune that he couldn't be happier about Ramirez returning.

"I missed having my best friend," Manson said. "We were like brothers."

As for Utah, Manson said it has been too long since he's been back. (It might have something to do with him once ripping up the Book of Mormon onstage.)

"The crowds were amazing," Manson said. "Living in an environment that is repressed brings out the best in people."

Manson is promoting his sixth and latest album, "Eat Me, Drink Me." It's a return to best-selling form for Manson, who had an incredible string of gold and platinum-selling albums until his 2005 relatively poor-selling album, "The Golden Age of Grotesque."

While he said music is his current priority, Manson has also focused lately on movie-making and politics. (As for the latter, he said the same people who are "pissed off" about Barack Obama's candidacy are the same people "pissed off" about Manson.)

Until the writers' strike slowed down production, Manson had been working on his directorial feature-film debut, "Phantasmagoria: The Visions of Lewis Carroll." With a reported budget of more than $40 million, Manson stars as the troubled writer of "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" and its sequel "Through the Looking-Glass." His girlfriend, 20-year-old Evan Rachel Wood, costars.

It was Wood, and not Manson, who was nominated for a Grammy this year for her singing role in "Across the Universe." Manson was proud of her achievement, something that he's been nominated for once before. (He's never won.)

"Hopefully maybe someone in the Manson family will win," he said.

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* DAVID BURGER can be reached at dburger@sltrib.com or 801-257-8620. Send comments about this story to livingeditor@sltrib.com.

* Marilyn Manson performs Thursday at 7:30 p.m. at the Great Saltair, 12408 W. Saltair Drive, Magna. Tickets are $35 in advance and $40 the day of, at SmithsTix and Ktix.