"Everyone secretly identifies with the villain, the character of the devil," insists Marilyn Manson. "The vampire is romantic, because it's the character who is flawed who is the most human. It's the one you can actually aspire to become."

Some clearly identify more than most. On one of the hottest days of the year, Manson slumps on a sofa in his hotel room, blinds pulled, air conditioning set to Arctic, wearing full leather and make-up: white face, red lips, cobalt eye-shadow, milky contact lenses - the beast in his lair.

The effect is striking, if not scary, unless you fear for his well-being. Sipping absinthe (his ever-present tipple of choice), the self-styled Antichrist Superstar is explaining how he came to embrace his inner romantic, albeit in vampire form.

"It was time to be introspective," he says, rejecting the kind of provocative personal politics that made him America's most controversial rock star. Once widely (if unfairly) associated with the Columbine high school massacre, he declares himself uninterested in responding to the Virginia Tech campus shootings. "The world's a victim of itself, so there's no reason to attack it."

Four years after self-imposed early retirement, Manson is back, and in love. Eat Me, Drink Me is his most personal album, a document of his divorce from the burlesque artist Dita Von Teese and his romance with the 19-year-old actress Evan Rachel Wood, albeit with industrial rhythms and lashings of gore. Featuring the song titles Mutilation Is The Most Sincere Form Of Flattery and You and Me and the Devil Makes Three, it is a kind of goth Blood on the Tracks, with the emphasis on "blood."

"I don't feel I have anything in common with who I was before I made this record," Manson says. "I was an empty person with nearly nothing left to say, nothing left to be, nothing left to live for. This record was all about saving myself, maybe my last attempt."

At 38, Manson appears to be a goth in the grips of a mid-life crisis. Creating an alter ego from the potent combination of a glamour icon (Marilyn Monroe) and a mass murderer (Charles Manson), the former music journalist (and one- time pupil of Heritage Christian School, Ohio) Brian Warner set new standards for rock outrage, reaping inevitable riches and infamy. Yet the last time we met, in Los Angeles in 1998, he turned up for the interview in jeans and T-shirt, a skinny, laid-back dude genially defending of the art of provocation.

A shocking yet compelling autobiography, The Long Hard Road Out of Hell, and articulate contribution to Michael Moore's gun control documentary Bowling For Columbine did much to lift his image. "People who didn't necessarily like what I created, liked what I had to say," he acknowledges.

His marriage to Von Teese last year, held at a castle in Ireland with photographs by Vogue, seemed to be the arrival of a Hollywood golden couple, an alternative Posh and Becks. He announced his retirement from music, to concentrate on painting and writing, directing and starring in a film of the life of his hero Lewis Carroll (due to start shooting in August). But he also fell into depression, partly sparked, he believes, by pressure to conform.

"A big part of love is really a fear of being alone, but when something's perfect, people are often so afraid that it's going to go wrong they end up destroying it. That's what happened in my marriage, and I almost destroyed myself in the process. I got to a point where I couldn't find a reason to live, which is different to wanting to die, because with suicide at least you have a goal. I was beyond suicidal. I almost didn't have the initiative."

Intelligent but fantastically self- absorbed, Manson delivers circuitous monologues in a monotone. It is like tuning into a conversation in his head, much of it obscurely addressed to his ex-wife. The result of this psychic and emotional turmoil, however, is his most accessible album to date, the making of which seems to have pulled him from the brink.

"This record is much more about my rise from the fire of a tragedy, than it is about a tragedy. It doesn't matter if you think I'm an alcoholic or schizophrenic, this record represents who I really am."

Manson's mother had been declared mentally ill during the same period, and he was confronted with the notion that her illness might be hereditary. "Seeing my mother very incapacitated, seeing her act the way I act when I really have upset moments, I did realize I could really end up allowing my mind to destroy me. I was told maybe I should consider putting myself in a mental hospital." Manson snorts at this, making it apparent that it was his ex-wife's suggestion.

In full costume, sipping absinthe, he appears to be embracing his inner lunatic. "I have realized that it's definitely something your will can overcome, it's your heart versus your mind. I have seen psychological scientific evaluations that could suggest symptoms of schizophrenia, at the same time I don't feel I could ever really identify with any art that hasn't been created out of that sort of circumstance. So it's really how much you want to consider something a handicap or a personality trait. I have always liked the story of Jekyll and Hyde."

THE DAILY TELEGRAPH