The album received acclaim from most music critics. Analyzing the album's intentions, Barry Walters of
The Village Voice noted, "
Mechanical Animals celebrates sexy celebrity in a typically Mansonian bacchanalia of contradictions. He's said all along that dirty media dominance is the cleanest and closest thing to divinity in a world that crucified the god in itself and replaced it with blind faith. Now he understands first-hand that stardom sucks, yet while he lifts a platform boot against its phony fat ass he still can't help reveling in the excess.
Antichrist Superstar critiqued fame in order to make him famous. Having been there/done that, Manson wants more because more is the American way he's hell-bent on subverting—even as he's soaking in it." Of the record's musical direction Walters noted, "Flexing far more range than rage, Manson's feminization shifts his vocal power center from a diseased gut to a broken heart. [...] Guitars roar and whine, bass booms, drums race, and synths twitter with a tweeness that's gonna turn Durannie grannie
Nick Rhodes's gray roots green." Jon Wiederhorn of
Amazon observed that "
Mechanical Animals is a brash, decadent, and glittery display of self-indulgent hooks and melodramatic vocals that sounds like
Aladdin Sane-era
David Bowie and
T. Rex at their most boisterous crossed with the more modern sounds of today's
industrial nation."
David Browne of
Entertainment Weekly wrote, "Looking back in mascara'd anger, Manson and [producer Michael] Beinhorn have fashioned music steeped in glam rock and concept-album bombast but updated with a crunching intensity [...] He layers the songs with cooing backup singers, electronica burbles, skulking guitars, and synths at their most decadently new wavy. The effect is often spectacular."
Lorraine Ali of the
Los Angeles Times commented "songs swagger with lipstick-wearing attitude, have fun with sleazy subject matter and actually convey some (gasp) human emotion [...] This album is the first time we actually experience Manson as a band, not a phenomenon filtered through Reznor's mixing board wizardry or a freak show accompanied by a soundtrack. An album that's powerful from start to finish is far more surprising than any controversial Manson high jinks [...] this record ensures his further infiltration of teenage America and earns him a new spot in the annals of great, big, pompous pop albums." David Browne describes that the sound of the album "is often spectacular: a lurid cabaret-rock revue for the post-global-economy meltdown."
Spin magazine noted the record is "essentially mining the same agitprop territory and 'premillennial' confusion that hipster, highbrow heroes such as
Alec Empire and
Tricky take for granted. Manson shares with Empire a preference for destroying the master's house with the master's tools. Like Tricky, Manson uses gender confusion as a
coping mechanism, less
identity politics than identity evasion."
Stephen Thomas Erlewine of
AllMusic described the record as "a big, clean rock record" and praised it as a "welcome change of pace" and "more tuneful than his clattering industrial cacophony." However, he also noted that devoid of "the cartoonish menace that distinguished his prior music [...] Marilyn Manson seems a little ordinary [...] Manson should have remembered—demons are never that scary in the light."
Accolades Spin ranked
Mechanical Animals the seventh best album on their 1998 End of Year List. Online music magazine
Addicted to Noise ranked
Mechanical Animals 25th in their 1998 list of the "Albums of the Year".
The Village Voice ranked
Mechanical Animals 40th in their 1998 list of the "Albums of the Year".
Kerrang! ranked
Mechanical Animals second on their 1998 list of the Albums of the Year.
Q magazine listed
Mechanical Animals among their picks for their 1998 Recordings of the Year list. Dutch magazine
Muziekkrant OOR ranked
Mechanical Animals 18th in their 1998
Albums of the Year list. The record ranked second in the Critics Top 50 and 10th in the Popular Poll of German magazine
Musik Express/Sounds in their 1998 "Albums of the Year" list. In 1999, American music journalist Ned Raggett listed
Mechanical Animals 78th in his "The Top 136 Albums of the Nineties". Also in 1999, Australian magazine
JUICE ranked
Mechanical Animals 84th in their ''100 Greatest Albums of the '90s
. In 2006, sister British magazines Classic Rock and Metal Hammer included Mechanical Animals
in The 200 Greatest Albums of the 90s
. Also in 2006, Dutch public radio broadcaster VPRO included Mechanical Animals
in their 299 Nominations of the Best Album of All Time
. The French edition of the British magazine Rock Sound ranked Mechanical Animals
56th in their Top 150 Albums of Our Lifetime (1992–2006)
and second in their 1998 Albums of the Year''. In the November 2003 issue of
Blender magazine, author
Chuck Palahniuk included the album in a list of his favourites, and said: "I met Marilyn Manson on a magazine assignment, and he wanted my advice on a novel he's writing. We drank absinthe once. I'll probably go to his show when he's in town next week. It's so fascinating to see somebody exorcise his demons in such a public way." ==Commercial performance==