ALICE COOPER: ​BRUTAL PLANET BY WILLIAM TEA

 
The late ‘90s/early 2000s were an interesting time for rock and metal music. To say the least.

The implosion of the grunge movement left a void in the hearts of music fans who hadn’t yet sated their appetite for angst and cynicism. At the same time, the proliferation of inexpensive home recording equipment, as well as computer sampling and sequencing programs, gave rise to a new generation of independent musicians. Throw all that together, along with influences from the burgeoning industrial and rap scenes, and you get “nu-metal,” the bastard offspring of a half-dozen seemingly disparate musical genres.

Sporting baggy pants, Manic Panic hair dye, and enough spiked collars to keep PetSmart stocked for a lifetime, nu-metal was simultaneously misanthropic and narcissistic, a chaotic crossbreed of grunge rock’s teenage alienation and glam metal’s flamboyant hedonism.
Suffice to say, it was a huge success.

More than a few of rock and metal’s old guard tried to get in on that success, either out of opportunistic bandwagon-jumping, a panicked bid to stay relevant in the face of changing tastes, or even a genuine interest in the stylistic ideas and recording methods the new trend had introduced. Results were mixed, from Slayer slowing down, stripping back, and tuning low for Diabolus in Musica to German thrashers Sodom struggling vainly to fool listeners into thinking they were a Pantera cover band with The Least Successful Human Cannonball.

Among the best of such old-meets-new efforts was Alice Cooper’s underrated and oft-forgotten twenty-first (!) studio album, 2000’s Brutal Planet. While Hot Topic-trawling mallrats were busy arguing over whether Marilyn Manson or Rob Zombie was the true heir apparent to Cooper’s throne, the reigning king of shock rock still held court, rebuffing all attempts to steal his crown.

Where bands like Slayer and Destruction proved to be square pegs ill-advisedly straining to jam themselves into round holes—their complex, high-speed styles were not easily brought into line with the much simpler, poppier model of nu-metal—Cooper’s classic rock roots gave him a decided edge when it came to crafting infectious hooks. Where thrash bands found themselves trying to completely reinvent their approach to songwriting, all Cooper had to do was keep it catchy and up the crunch.

Right from the start, Cooper shows how good he is at balancing that exact dynamic. Eternally occupying the perfect middle-ground between drill sergeant and carnival barker, Cooper is front and center, riding crop in hand, as Brutal Planet kicks things off with the titular track’s chugging wall of riffs.
Fully embracing nu-metal’s industrial influences, he builds his opener on the back of a driving, mechanical rhythm that might become monotonous in a lesser musician’s hands. Instead, Cooper deftly counters the pounding beat with regular interludes of squalling guitar licks, ethereal female backing vocals, and a rousing singalong chorus wherein the man rattles off a litany of atrocities from across humanity’s long, sordid history.

Unfortunately, if Brutal Planet has one major weakness, those atrocity-obsessed lyrics are it. In keeping with the album’s grittier, grimier sound, Cooper forgoes his usual EC Comics/Grand Guignol camp in favor of darker, more grounded themes. In a sense, Brutal Planet is a concept album, something Cooper is obviously no stranger to. However, its horrors are less “serial killer psychodrama” and more “post-apocalyptic sci-fi dystopia.” And like most such science fiction, Brutal Planet is really social fiction.

Ultimately, Cooper’s so-called “Brutal Planet” is basically just the world as we know it, only with the positives extracted and the negatives exaggerated.

This could make for an interesting twist on the classic Cooper formula, if only the man’s attempts to imbue his lyrics with manufactured “social relevance” didn’t feel so ham-fisted. As effortlessly as Cooper manages to update his sound for the nu-metal era, his lyrics are clearly trying way too hard. It is certainly more than a little jarring (not to mention arguably in poor taste) to hear an artist who previously sang the theme song for a Friday the 13th movie literally name-drop the Holocaust as just one example out of many of how “brutal” his “Brutal Planet” is.

Later, on “Eat Some More (Taste the Pain)” Cooper belts out the following bon mot: “Lots of melting cheddar cheese / Spreading its unique disease / Rotting veggies on the ground / Where hungry little kids are found.” First-world gluttony and third-world poverty are heavy themes, no doubt, but how can one take seriously a seething industrial metal song about the evils of cheddar fucking cheese?

By favoring this kind of clumsy on-the-nose bluntness over the poetic ambiguity of his earlier albums or even the macabre humor of his later ones, Cooper comes off less like the caustic cultural critic he’s trying to be and more like a bitter old curmudgeon bitching about how shitty everything is.

Cooper’s desire to give his music a meaningful and timely message is admirable, but it lacks tact and, one could argue, is a bit too heavily colored by the man’s real-life religious beliefs. Indeed, at times Brutal Planet feels like it could easily be filed in the Christian rock section of your local record shop (here’s an excerpt from the title track: “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”). A curious choice given the audience Cooper seems to be trying to court.

It’s a good thing, then, that the music itself is rock-solid throughout, at times even proving more consistent than some of Cooper’s more well-known albums. Simply put, there’s not a single track here that doesn’t have a fiendishly catchy hook, some mean guitar riffs, a relentless industrial beat, or an undeniably anthemic chorus.

More often than not, you get all of the above. Whether it’s the full-steam-ahead gallop of “It’s the Little Things,” the soaring arena rock balladry of “Take It Like a Woman,” or the contrast of robotic chanting and seductive crooning in “Gimme,” Cooper’s songwriting chops are not diluted in the slightest by this new aesthetic.

Indeed, despite the po-faced spoken-word verses, the chorus of “Sanctuary” hearkens back to the best of Cooper’s ‘80s material, a high-energy rocker sure to get fists pumping. Though no more subtle than any other song on the album, “Wicked Young Man” is both a jet-black head-banging military march and a lyrical highlight, railing against not only Columbine-style school shooters and neo-Nazi skinheads, but also the sanctimonious politicians who blame movies, music, and video games for such real-life violence.

Even the derivative album-closer “Cold Machines” (which shamelessly cribs the guitar and drum work of Marilyn Manson’s “The Beautiful People”) is not without its charms, thanks to a melodic earwig chorus that makes excellent use of rising and falling vocals.
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Then there’s the album’s best offering, “Pick Up the Bones,” a brooding anti-war lament that starts out with some slow acoustic plucking before gradually swelling to a tremendous, tortured crescendo that climaxes with weeping guitars and, finally, a sobering come-down into quiet loneliness and loss. Dripping with raw emotion, evocative imagery, and elegant songcraft, “Pick Up the Bones” serves as the purest realization of Brutal Planet’s bleak post-apocalyptic vision, as well as one of Cooper’s very best songs, bar none. A shame that it’s hidden away on such an overlooked album.

In truth, any one of Brutal Planet’s 11 tracks could have made for an ideal lead single back in the day, and many still easily trounce the hits of those same late ‘90s/early 2000s nu-metal acts whom Cooper appears to be modeling himself after with this effort. Very much a diamond in the rough, Brutal Planet had, and still has, the unfortunate distinction of being overlooked both by the younger audiences at the time of its release, who viewed Cooper as a wrinkly old dinosaur, as well by Cooper’s own longtime fans, who saw the album as an undignified trend-chasing cash-grab.

Those willing to look past their prejudices and assumptions, however, will find Brutal Planet an unexpected testament to Cooper’s timelessness, versatility, and sheer talent.