Following the success of his first solo album, Welcome to My Nightmare, Alice Cooper followed it up with another concept album, Goes to Hell, similar in style to its predecessor. Again, longtime Alice producer Bob Ezrin was on board, and while there are a few highlights, Goes to Hell signaled an Alice era where he pretty much forsook the raw garage rock of his early days (Killer, School's Out) in favor of polished studio glitz…
Raise Your Fist and Yell is the 17th studio album by Alice Cooper released on September 5th 1987. It features the track "Prince of Darkness", which is featured very briefly in the John Carpenter film of the same name, in which Cooper has a cameo as a murderous vagrant. The song can be heard on the Walkman of one of his victims. A music video was made for the song "Freedom" which also became the album's hit single.
The Life and Crimes of Alice Cooper is a 4-CD box set by Alice Cooper. It includes select tracks from every studio album released up until then, plus many B-sides, unreleased songs, and other rarities. What made Alice Cooper a star? Sure, he had a tight, exciting band and some great songs that were as good as hard rock got in the early '70s, but he distinguished himself as a showman. By bringing shameless theatricality to rock & roll, he separated himself from the pack and became a superstar – the kind of person who is known for being himself more than for his achievements.
Dragontown continues the assault of Alice Cooper's gift to the new millennium that was Brutal Planet. Considered a third chapter of a trilogy initiated by 1994's The Last Temptation, this shadowy production plays like hardcore in slow motion. There is no one identifiable song like "Gimme" or "Brutal Planet" from the last episode, but the production values are high and the innovative riffs consistent. This work stands on its own, chock-full of the dark prince of pop's nasty humor.
Alice Cooper takes over Halloween with a sensational concert featuring show stopping performances. Cooper has specially selected three of the UK's most dangerous performers to appear with him on stage. Their bizarre acts will feature guillotines, electric chairs, blood special effects and fire-eaters…
Dragontown continues the assault of Alice Cooper's gift to the new millennium that was Brutal Planet. Considered a third chapter of a trilogy initiated by 1994's The Last Temptation, this shadowy production plays like hardcore in slow motion. There is no one identifiable song like "Gimme" or "Brutal Planet" from the last episode, but the production values are high and the innovative riffs consistent. This work stands on its own, chock-full of the dark prince of pop's nasty humor. "It's Much Too Late" is supposed to be for John Lennon, but the Beatlesque backing vocals sound like Carole King's hit from Tapestry on hard drugs. There are references to the sacrilege spread out over Lennon's work from Plastic Ono Band to Imagine, but here Alice takes off the gloves and gives the church the finger: "I'm sending you all to hell/I'm tired and I'm wired here…."
Coming off such conceptual, theatrical, sleazy hard rock records as the massively successful School's Out (1972) and Billion Dollar Babies (1973), the Alice Cooper group decided that their next release would be more along the lines of their earlier, more straightforward work (à la Love It to Death). While Muscle of Love was a gold-certified Top Ten success, it performed below expectations (their previous two albums peaked at number two and number one, respectively) and would unfortunately prove to be the original Alice Cooper band's last studio album together…
Some things never change – the sky is blue, two plus two equals four, the sun rises in the east, and Alice Cooper will make albums where he sneers out spooky lyrics as long as he can draw breath. Cooper hadn't had anything resembling a hit since the mid-'90s, but the man clearly had no desire to retire, and though he was 69 years old when he released Paranormal in 2017, he still sounded admirably spry and hadn't lost his voice or his charisma. Paranormal was released not long after Cooper reunited with surviving members of the original Alice Cooper band for some surprise shows, and the advance word on the album had it that Cooper was going to write and record with them.