On this date in 1996, Marilyn Manson's album "Antichrist Superstar" was released, debuting at number 3 in the Billboard 200.
The allegorical storyline of this concept album is largely of Manson's invention, chronicling the growth into Antichrist of a worm (conceivably an echo of Nietzsche? "You have grown from worm to man, but much in you is still worm.", Thus Spoke Zarathustra.).
Along the way, a few songs like "Little Horn" - arguably the album's most aggressive - make clear Biblical references. In this case the allusion is to the dream of the four beasts in Daniel 7:
In the Bible, Daniel dreams of four conquering beasts representing the empires that had overcome the Israelites in the course of history. The last of these beasts - standing for Alexander the Great's Macedonian Empire - has nine horns, symbolizing nine Hellenic kings who ruled over Israel after Alexander. As Daniel watches, the beast grows a tenth "little horn", representing the blasphemous oppressor Antiochus IV Epiphanes (whose overthrow in the Maccabean Revolt is still celebrated as Hanukkah).
These correspondences - of beasts to empires, horns to Hellenic kings, and so on - form the contemporary consensus interpretation of the passage. But Christian theologians have interpreted Daniel's dream in wild and numerous ways over time, leaving open "little horn" to Manson as a general reference to any blasphemous usurper.
