MARILYN MANSON's "best of" collection, "Lest We Forget", has been certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for shipments in excess of 500,000 copies.

Manson recently told MTV.com that he's been writing and recording his still-untitled sixth LP in two different California studios with KMFDM guitarist and MANSON studio bassist Tim Skold, keyboardist and drummer Pogo (Stephen Bier Jr.) and an assortment of other musicians.

The music, Manson said, is the "most guitar-driven" and "most original that I've heard created. This record has a very unpleasant attitude toward itself, and I expect it to be — without sounding like someone who says this every time they make a record — something above and beyond and different — sonically, emotionally — than anything I've done."

The singer told MTV.com that his new songs "have probably the most romantic feel to them" and are inspired in large part by his fiancée, burlesque queen Dita von Teese.

"They have probably the most romantic feel to them," he said. "This is a desperate and crippling desire for romance — not in the romance sense of a Reese Witherspoon movie, but in the sense of living your life like a film and enjoying it that way. I've found a woman I can relate to. That's something — and I don't even feel sappy saying it — that, if anyone has that, don't lose it, because it's probably the only thing that you can ever really find any satisfaction from."