Eh, buying and recording at Sharon Tate's house, the snuff films, music videos crucifying a monkey, that sort of stuff to me is very much shock value designed to push people's buttons. He was a bit more artistic and slightly less over top version of Manson in ways at the time. His work in general has aged better than Manson's for a variety of reasons (getting more into film scores for one thing has certainly helped), and I'm sure he had some genuinely dark emotions he was working out, but part of his method is just in the long line of upping the ante from Alice Cooper, KISS and such.