Foetus Maximus

“I’m the original non-musician. I know what I want to hear, I know what parts I want to play, and then I’ll pick up that instrument and bang it out,” Thirlwell grins. In the studio, he’s a demonic, goofier Brian Eno, except Eno “doesn’t pick up the same instruments.”

Thirlwell’s peculiar sense of humor (he once referred to John Cage, porn starlet Christy Canyon and “the guy who invented spray-on hair” as his major influences) has pummeled religion and history in his work. “Some things that I find screamingly hilarious, other people find offensive, and sometimes people gloss over what I think is deadly serious.” (You need only glance at Manorexia titles like “The Hardened Artery” and “Tubercular Bells” to know it’s pure Thirlwell.)

He won’t cop to multiple personalities (although yet another long-lost alter-ego, Clint Ruin, performed at the Fetish Ball in February), but Thirlwell says he’s practiced in the art of “plate-spinning.” “My whole life is about having armor,” he says. “I view those characters as a way to interface with the world.” He spent 12 years in an all-boys Baptist school, and even back then, “I remember the chaplain telling me I needed to have more faith.”

This year’s burst of activity results from the fact that Thirlwell has laid low for the last few years. He used to drink — constantly and so much that while on tour in Europe in 1997, he tripped and fell offstage, breaking both hands. “I got to the point where I was vacillating between abject terror and blackouts,” he says. “It was like that death wish I’d been expressing for myself for so many years started to become real, and I sort of put the brakes on and thought, ‘Is this the way I want to go out?’”

It’s not surprising that the act of creating music has become even more cathartic since he’s become sober. “Sometimes I’ve worked through things, and [it’s] only inflamed me. Sometimes, especially now, it’s the most honest I can be.” Judging from his recent work, sobriety hasn’t diminished his creativity.

Thirlwell sees his music as his legacy. “I’m not the sort of person who wants to live forever. I don’t know if I want to live this time! But I want my music to remain.” And after all, he says with a snarl, “There’s still plenty of polluted things happening between my ears.”