sensedatum Barry Manilow. Thats what came to my mind when I first listened to the ballad "I never cry". I liked Barry Manilow when I was a child and kept listening to the Copacabana Lp. Well in this Alice Copper album there are quite a few songs that reminds me Barry Manilow. And yes, if you are into pop, some may be nice songs, others are much oversweetened. And you find strings arrangements everywhere. Cooper did indeed went to hell for making this record. A little odd that this album nowadays has almost the same rating as the first Alice Copper greatest hits album (!?)

lukretion The turn of the new millennium marked a stark change in sound for shock rock / hard rock maestro Alice Cooper. In 2000 he released a heavy, industrial metal/rock record, Brutal Planet, which received mixed responses from public and critics, and was even dubbed as a paradoxical and not-so-subtle attempt to follow the footsteps of his creative grandchild (at least as far as shocking image goes), Marilyn Manson. Released only one year later, Dragontown continues in a similar direction as it predecessor, albeit also looking back to a more classic Alice Cooper sound. The return of Alice’s veteran producer Bob Ezrin may or may not have had something to do with it. Regardless, Dragontown strikes a better balance than Brutal Planet between Alice’s newly-found modernist proclivity and the rest of his discography, and is as a consequence less of a disaster compared to his 2000’s album.

Having said that, Dragontown remains a flawed affair and ranks fairly low in Cooper’s discography. The best material is concentrated in the first half of the record. Songs like “Triggerman”, “Dragontown”, “Sex, Death & Money” and “Fantasy Man” lie at the crossroad between heavy, industrial metal and classic hard rock. Crunchy guitars and groovy drum patterns complement Alice’s raspy voice and characteristic phrasing. It’s an entertaining and mildly interesting hybrid that stretches the reaches of Alice’s music into the new millennium, without dispensing with its sonic heritage

The second half of the disc is remarkably worse. It is filled with cringeworthy ideas, such as the Elvis’ impersonation on “Disgraceland” or the rapped singing on “Sister Sara”. Meanwhile, “Every Woman Has a Name” is a 70s-infused ballad and the record’s last three songs go back to the mixture of industrial and classic hard rock, but in a very bland and unremarkable way. There is a palpable lack of cohesion among these songs, which inevitably reduces the listening value of the whole album.

Overall, although not totally unlistenable like Brutal Planet, Dragontown is hardly a return to form for Alice Cooper. The album’s material is slightly more interesting and finds a better footing between the “new” and “old” Alice Cooper sound. However, the fact that all of the songs included on this record will cease to appear in live sets shortly after the release of the album, says a lot about its quality and overall positioning within Alice Cooper’s sprawling discography.

Bmiler This is quite a bit different from the Alice Cooper that made him/them famous (as the band before 1975 was called Alice Cooper, not just Vincent Furnier). What you get here is heavy psych. Pretties For You was released on Frank Zappa's Straight label, and thanks to Zappa, some humor and quirky elements can be found here, even if Zappa never produced the album, there's a slight Zappa influence amongst the heavy psych. The back cover shows the band looking like a glam rock band circa 1972 (Alice Cooper himself wearing a dress but the facepaint hadn't yet been established), so that's actually pretty ahead of its time there, although the music is pretty much of its time for 1969. "Apple Bush", for example shows the quirky side, while "Fields of Regret" is more serious heavy psych. Plus you get "Reflected" which was later rerecorded in 1972 and released as a single as "Elected" (and ended up on Billion Dollar Babies the next year). The album isn't looked too fondly of, which is too bad, given I happen to like psych music, and this album happens to deliver. While the regular fan starts with Love it to Death, for obvious reasons, it's the beginning of Alice Cooper the shock rock artist, here it's Alice Cooper still trying to get his/their feet wet, and actually it's better than many will let you believe. "Levity Ball" is a great song, although the sound quality is pretty awful (it was a live recording), actually the original LP isn't that great sounding (I own the original LP on the orange label that says "Straight" on top in a curved fashion), and sometime I think that's the reason for the low rating. So another one of those underrated albums that I actually quite enjoy!

Warthur Alice Cooper the band was no more, but Alice Cooper the frontman was still going strong, and Welcome To My Nightmare is probably the best of his "solo" albums. Although his bandmates had gone, and with them the sense of genuine filth that clung to the edges of classic albums like Billion Dollar Babies, Alice had kept custody of Bob Ezrin after the divorce, and Ezrin was able to get some session musicians together to wheel out some hard glam rock that at least superficially resembles the band's old sound, plus a few guest spots like Vincent Price offering a classic monologue on The Black Widow.

It's certainly a well-polished spectacle, and Cooper has been riffing on the general ideas developed here intermittently ever since - see not just the misguided idea of producing an actual sequel to the album, Welcome 2 My Nightmare, but also the Along Came a Spider album, which took the imagery of The Black Widow and essentially expanded it into a serial killer-themed concept album.

But as lyricalsly evocative and competently produced as the album is, there's something about it which leaves me a little cold every time. It just feels a little bit calculated - a little too slick, a little too polished, a little too absent of the rough edges and out-of-left-field departures the band brought to the table. The cover art here is particularly apt - this is Alice Cooper cleaned up and made ready for prime time, and thus the danger feels nullified, rendered safe and tame by the campy flair of it all. This is a matter of taste, of course, but it remains consistent no matter how often I give the album a fair chance.

siLLy puPPy Definately not Alice's best. Upon first crushing riffage it immediately sounds like a ripoff of Rammstein, especially on the “Sehnsucht” album. The last song “Cold Machines” starts off ripping off “The Beautiful People” from Marilyn Manson. The songs on this album are ok, but this is ALICE COOPER. They're supposed to be more than ok, right? I mean even the stuff in the 80s may have been playing keep up with the new game in town but at least the songs were catchy and the lyrics were clever. On this album it simply feels like Alice is trying a little too hard to be relevant in an ever changing musical landscape and instead of trying to find some relevant life experiences to bring forth a new surge of creativity he seems to be trying to borrow here and supplement there from the well that has already sprung forth much more talented acts for this kind of sound. Nice try Alice but this one just lacks sincerity, integrity and worst of all, anything that grabs my attention.