The most prominent lineup of musicians during their formative years included keyboardist Madonna Wayne Gacy, bassist Gidget Gein and drummer Sara Lee Lucas.

The band's visually spectacular concerts earned them a loyal fanbase in the South Florida punk and hardcore music scene, eventually gaining the attention of Nine Inch Nails vocalist Trent Reznor, who signed them to his Nothing Records vanity label.

However, the band was unhappy with his production, and this material was then re-produced and remixed in various Los Angeles recording studios by Manson and Reznor, along with assistant producers Sean Beavan and Alan Moulder.

Parts of the album were re-recorded at Reznor's home studio at 10050 Cielo Drive, where members of the Manson Family infamously committed the Tate murders in 1969.

Portrait of an American Family was released to limited commercial success and mostly positive reviews; in 2017, Rolling Stone deemed the album one of the greatest in the history of heavy metal music.

[11] Their live shows routinely featured naked women nailed to crucifixes, young children locked in cages,[12] amateur pyrotechnics and sadomasochism,[11] as well as piñatas filled with butchered animal remains and experiments in reverse psychology.

[13] After being impressed by the material, Reznor offered the group a spot opening for Nine Inch Nails and Meat Beat Manifesto at Club Nu in Miami on July 3, 1990.

[14] Bassist Gidget Gein and live drummer Sara Lee Lucas would eventually join the band, and they continued touring and releasing EPs independently for the next two years.

[12] In November 1992, Reznor invited the band's vocalist to attend "strategic talks" in Los Angeles,[5] and to appear as a guitarist in a music video for the Nine Inch Nails track "Gave Up".

"[12] Before reworking the album in Los Angeles, the band played shows in Florida under the name Mrs. Scabtree,[22] which consisted of members of Marilyn Manson, Amboog-a-Lard, Jack Off Jill and The Itch.

[27] Reznor rented the property in 1992 and built a recording studio inside the residence, which he named 'Pig'—a reference to that word being written with Sharon Tate's blood on the front door of the house on the night of the massacre.

[25] Reznor denied renting the property in an attempt to have the infamy of the massacre associated with his music, and chastised Manson for doing so, saying: "I wasn't trying to create some manufactured spooky thing.

[33][34] In his autobiography, The Long Hard Road Out of Hell, Manson explained that the lyrics to the second song on the album, "Cake and Sodomy", were inspired by a trip to New York City in 1990.

He said that he wrote its lyrics in a hotel room after spending several hours viewing public-access cable television and "watching Pat Robertson preach about society's evils and then ask people to call him with their credit card number.

[25][38] "Dope Hat" contains various samples of dialogue spoken by Charles Nelson Reilly – the actor who portrayed Horatio J. HooDoo – in Sid and Marty Krofft's television series Lidsville (1971–73).

[43] "My Monkey" contains numerous samples of interviews from Charles Manson;[44] several of its verses are derived from "Mechanical Man", a song from his 1970 album Lie: The Love and Terror Cult.

[25] The band's vocalist discussed his thoughts on Portrait of an American Family in retrospect with Empyrean Magazine, circa May/June 1995: Well, the whole point of the album was that I wanted to say a lot of the things I've said in interviews.

[16] Although the photograph was taken by his mother with no vulgar intent, and no genitalia is shown, Interscope's parent company Time Warner demanded it be removed on the grounds that it could constitute child pornography.

"[12] Another piece of interior photography consisted of an image of a Blythe doll surrounded by Polaroid pictures of a mutilated female body, purportedly faked by Manson and several of his friends.

"[12] Guns N' Roses had faced widespread criticism over the inclusion of "Look at Your Game, Girl" – a cover of a Charles Manson song – as a hidden track on their 1993 album "The Spaghetti Incident?".

[12] They met with Guy Oseary and Freddy DeMann from Maverick Records, Madonna's vanity label, who were initially worried that their lyrics or image included antisemitism,[N 4] although they found this was not the case.

The band's vocalist was arrested after the tour's first date, in Jacksonville, for allegedly violating Florida's Adult Entertainment Code by simulating sex on stage while wearing a strap-on dildo.

[27] He narrowly avoided arrest four nights later – on New Year's Eve in Fort Lauderdale – after Nine Inch Nails guitarist Robin Finck jumped on stage wearing a g-string and attempted to play an unspecified practical joke on the singer involving powdered sugar.

However, the release was cancelled, as the material recorded during these sessions was compiled into a standalone EP of cover versions, remixes and interludes titled Smells Like Children.

[65] Portrait of an American Family was re-released in 2009 as a limited edition green-colored vinyl LP box set, which also contained a T-shirt emblazoned with the album cover.

Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic said that "Beneath all the camp shock, there are signs of [Manson's] unerring eye for genuine outrage and musical talent, particularly on the trio of 'Cake and Sodomy', 'Lunchbox', and 'Dope Hat'.

Like it or not, Marilyn Manson and the Spooky Kids gave rock the dark shot in the arm that was needed at the time when music had given itself completely over to the bland and self-indulgent emotional ballads of alt-rock kings like Pearl Jam.

"[78] In a feature written for the twentieth anniversary of the record, Tom Breihan of Stereogum praised the album's production and quality of the band's songwriting, but said that Portrait of an American Family had aged badly, and was critical of Manson's vocals and the amount of samples used throughout.

His whole thing was a violent, overblown rejection of vast forces of oppression and control, and his tactics made him a target, both of mass-culture disdain and of superior alt-culture snark.

[82] Despite never entering the top 100 of the UK Albums Chart,[83] in 2013 the record was certified silver by the British Phonographic Industry, indicating sales[84] in excess of 60,000 copies in that country.