BRUTAL PLANET: Alice Cooper
By: Steve BiodrowskiDate: Saturday, July 08, 2000
You want horror? Open your eyes and take a look at the world around you. That seems to be the message behind Brutal Planet, the first studio album from Alice Cooper since 1994's The Last Temptation. In that previous recording, the Coop dealt with themes of damnation and redemption in a modern world beset by urban terrors (violence, drugs, etc), but the narrative focus was narrow (the story, at least as outlined in the companion comic book written by Neil Gaiman, centered on a single young boy). For the follow-up (not a sequel exactly, though there is some thematic continuity), Cooper opens his sights wide; as the album title implies, he looks at the world as a whole, and what he sees is not pretty.
Although there is no narrative thread, this is still a concept album, each track outlining some evidence in support of the title's assertion that we are living on 'such a brutal planet...such an ugly world.' Of course, it has become fashionable for rock and roll musicians (e.g., Nine Inch Nails) to sing about the horrors of modern life, but usually there is a certain solipsism to the approach: the message usually is 'The world is so awful that it makes me feel depressed; don't you feel sorry for me because I'm such a sensitive soul?'
Cooper, on the other hand, is not looking for sympathy. In fact, the dominant emotion on the album is righteous outrage. By now, fans all know that he was born Vincent Furnier, a minister's son. With his previous album, and now with Brutal Planet, that background is finally moving to the foreground. If the Earth is 'such a living Hell,' then it's because we have chose damnation, he tells us. And if the story of Genesis isn't enough to convince you, he'll site more other evidence that lays the blame on humanity's own soulless indifference to the pain and suffering of others.
The songs stay true to the form Cooper has established since going solo years ago, although the instrumental-solo passages have been condensed down to emphasize the lyrics: elaborate verses, choruses and bridges (unlike Aerosmith, Cooper isn't content with simply singing the song's title over and over again as the refrain). The album begins nicely with the title track, wherein the singer calls out to his listeners to come down to this 'ball of hate.' His only answer comes from an angelic voice, on highso high, in fact, as to be blind to the horrors being described:
This world is such perfectionit's just like paradise/A truly grand creationfrom up here it looks so nice.
If there are any doubts about how the Earth descended into this living hell, the song offers possible answers:
Right here we stoned the prophets, built idols out of mud/right here we fed the lions Christian flesh and Christian blood/down here is where we hung him, upon an ugly cross/over there we filled the ovens, right here the holocaust.
Subsequent songs outline the theme from other angles. 'Wicked Young Man' is a look at mindless, irrational hate in the form of a skin-headed neo-Nazi. ('It's not the games that I play, the movies I see, the music I digI'm just a wicked young man.' With sentiments like this, the song would make a perfect title track for the next film written by Andrew Kevin Walker (Seven), who also resists offering up any explanation for evil.) 'Sanctuary' is a look at the zombified nature of modern life that leads people to seek out a private sanctuary within their minds. 'Blow Me A Kiss' touches on hates crimes.
More interesting are 'Eat Some More' and 'Pick Up the Bones.' The former chastises the wealthy and gluttonous who gorge themselves while millions starve ('We're not happy till we're choking'). The latter is a harrowing tale of an unfortunate war survivor collecting the remains of his dead relatives for a funeral pyre:
Pick up the bones and set them on fire, follow the smoke, going higher and higher/Pick up the bones and wish them goodnight, pray 'em a prayer, and turn out the light.
The effect is horrificnot surprising, coming from Alice. What is surprising is how emotionally affecting the piece is. We don't think of Alice Cooper as a singer-songwriter capable of moving people to tears, but this song will do it.
'Pessi-Mystic' looks at a character driven to despair by the each day's new and more awful news. 'Gimme' looks at the greed that results as people desperately try to grab some kind of happiness from life; the song also represents a link to Last Temptation, with the return of Alice Satanic persona, offering up worldly wealthfor a price. ('I really hate to repeat myself, but nothing's free.')
'It's the Little Things' gives a slightly tongue-in-cheek take on the album's themes; it's almost a jokey variation on 'Wicked Young Man,' with narrator expressing his indifference to major atrocities but admitting that the 'little things' drive him to homicidal fury: 'You can poison my cat, baby; I don't care/But if you talk in the movies, I'll kill you right there.'
'You Took It Like a Woman,' the closest thing on the album to a radio-friendly song, restates some ideas from 'Only Women Bleed' (on Welcome to My Nightmare). The emphasis on pain and suffering is even greater in the new song, but the repeated chorus emphasize the strength it takes to survive. The album ends with 'Cold Machines,' which deals with ideas similar to those in 'Sanctuary.' This time, the corporate drone bemoans the fact that he and the co-worker he secretly loves are nothing but 'cold machines' trapped in an impersonal, mechanized, futuristic world:
You don't know my name, you don't know my number, you don't know my face at all/We walk right past each other every single day, like cold machines, we're marching on and on and on.
Thematically, the album ranks with the best work Cooper has ever done. (My wife, who used to work as a corporate droid before I rescued her from the clutches of G.E., was particularly amused at his ability to capture the essence of that environment in 'Cold Machines,' despite the fact that he obviously has never had to work that kind of job a day in his life.) The depth of feeling throughout the album is unarguable, and if the lyrical sophistication is not always equal to the thematic intentionwell, what we want out of popular art is not intellectualism but impact. Alice isn't trying to tell us something we don't already know; he's reminding us of something we'd rather forget, and in a case like that, the emotional resonance is what counts, because it sinks more deeply and last much longer.
Musically, the album represents another step forward. As he has been doing since leaving his original bandmates in the '70s, Cooper chooses a new composer-collaborator to give this effort its own musical identity. Here credit goes to Rob Marlette, who produced the album, co-wrote all the songs, and played bass, keyboards, and rhythm guitars. (Cooper's long-time associate Bob Ezrin was on board as executive producer.) The overall sound seems inspired by Cooper's collaboration with Rob Zombie on 'Hands of Death' from the X-Files tie-in album Songs in the Key of X; there are also elements reminiscent of recent work from Marilyn Manson and Nine Inch Nails.
This industrial strength metal sound, although consistent and effectively suited to Alice's lyrics, occasionally grows monotonous, slightly diminishing the impact of listening to the album all the way through. But individual tracks stand out as genuine gems, and the overall feeling comes through loud and clear. Cooper began his career with a brand of decadent horror aimed at tweaking adult sensibilities while appealing to their children. Later, when he came out of the closet, so to speak, as a normal guy who just played a character on stage, he moved into a camp, tongue-in-cheek approachone might even call it goofy horror. Now, he has changed once again, and it's not hard to understand why.
During his 'Mr. Nice Guy' period (while appearing on The Tonight Show, Hollywood Squares, etc), Cooper admitted that the predominant influence on him was television. Back in the era of The Brady Bunch, it might have been easy to derive a light-hearted look at the world from this medium. But today, with CNN and countless cable/satellite channels beaming stories of bloodshed, ethnic cleansing, and other atrocities, it's hard not to look at the tube and conclude it is a 'brutal planet.'
BRUTAL PLANET: Spitfire Records, June 2000. Produced by Bob Marlette; executive producer, Bob Ezrin. Vocals: Alice Cooper. Guitars: China, Phil X, Ryan Roxie. Drums: Eric Singer. Rhythm guitar, keyboards, bass: Bob Marlette. Backing vocals on 'Brutal Planet': Natalie Delaney. Addtional programming and sound design: Sid Riggs. String arrangements: Eva King. Running time: 48:04
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