ALICE COOPER: ​DRAGONTOWN BY WILLIAM TEA

 
In 2000, Alice Cooper released his first record in six long years, Brutal Planet, and with it came a dark industrial metal makeover that changed him from a rock ‘n’ roll Cryptkeeper into a grim ‘n’ gritty social critic. Intent to make the most out of this reinvention, the shock rock chameleon opted not to leave his audience waiting six more years, instead unleashing another full-length in 2001, titled Dragontown.

Like Brutal Planet before it, Dragontown would never quite achieve the same popularity with his established fanbase as earlier classics like Welcome to My Nightmare or Trash, nor would it achieve the Marilyn Manson/Rob Zombie-esque levels of nu-metal success it seemed deliberately designed to court. And yet, also like Brutal Planet, Dragontown would turn out to be one of the, ahem, dirtiest diamonds in Cooper’s lengthy discography, a flawed but nonetheless extraordinary portrait of a man still riding high at the peak of his musical abilities, even as his lyrics often fell to depressingly dire lows.

Fittingly, Dragontown isn’t just a follow-up to Brutal Planet but actually a direct sequel, the second act of what was originally intended to be a trilogy (sadly, the proposed part three never panned out). Where its predecessor used a flimsy post-apocalyptic sci-fi veneer as a vehicle for Cooper to vent his spleen about the moral decay of modern society, Dragontown uses a similarly flimsy dystopian setting (i.e. the titular locale, which is supposedly “the worst town on Brutal Planet,” but which is obviously meant to represent the classic Christian conception of Hell) to explore a menagerie of damned souls consumed by their various sins. In this way, the record may be an even more personal and religious piece of work for the born again Cooper than Brutal Planet was. Unfortunately, that means it’s twice as preachy.

Good thing then that the music here is also twice as good, just as heavy as Brutal Planet’s but with even stronger hooks and greater diversity. A machine-gun blast of drums and a motorcycle roar of guitars set the stage as album-opener “Triggerman” introduces us to another of Cooper’s many self-insert ringmaster-type characters (something Brutal Planet sorely lacked). Right away, this gives Dragontown a more cogent structure than its predecessor and makes the story feel more thought-out.

After a chaotic rush to the end complete with frantic guitar solo, “Triggerman” leads into the synthetic throb and chugging riffage of “Deeper.” If there were any doubts as to the Triggerman real’s identity or Dragontown’s true location, they’re quickly dispelled amid swells of cult-like choir chanting, followed by Cooper’s revelation that “The elevator broke / It went right through the floor / It left a burning hole / Down and down and down we go.”

The momentum from these two tracks builds steadily until finally climaxing in the high drama and layered atmosphere of the suitably anthemic title track. This one sees Cooper alternating between moody, malevolent verses and big, bombastic choruses, all while reintroducing us to some very familiar characters, such as the genocidal psychopath of Brutal Planet’s “Wicked Young Man” and the skeletal family of victims from “Pick Up the Bones”

So far, so good. The first hint that we get that Dragontown’s lyrics have the potential to be even worse than Brutal Planet’s comes in “Sex, Death, and Money,” which itself is not bad but nonetheless signals the introduction of an element which will ultimately end up being the culprit behind some of the record’s biggest misfires: comedy. Cooper has long had a very distinctive sense of humor which pairs well with his mustache-twirling antics as rock music’s favorite bogeyman. The absence of that was one of the most jarring aspects of the intensely dour Brutal Planet, exposing a few weaknesses in Cooper’s armor that long-time fans were not used to seeing. The restoration of the musician’s inner court jester seems a welcome change on Dragontown. At first.

While “Sex, Death, and Money” fares well as a catchy, enjoyable little piss-take of the kind of censorious moralists who publicly express shock and outrage over “offensive” entertainment on one hand while indulging in the same kind of perversions privately on the other, other examples prove less successful. Indeed, the juxtaposition of campy comedy with the somber savagery of the Dragontown’s concept, themes, and sound gives those moments when the humor is at its most blatant an off-putting flavor, as though it just doesn’t belong. And nowhere is Cooper’s humor at its most blatant than on “It’s Much Too Late” and “Disgraceland.”

The former is unusually breezy and bouncy, even Beatles-esque at times, featuring an annoyingly nasally Cooper playing the role of a stuck-up goody-two-shoes boasting about a lifetime of good deeds even while stuck in Hell (er, I mean Dragontown) along with all the other sinners. The latter is a musically interestingly mash-up of industrial metal and rockabilly that sees Cooper doing a tiresome Elvis Presley impression while cracking terrible zingers about how the King “ate his weight in country ham” and “lived on southern deep-fried Spam” and ultimately “finished his short life sweaty and bloated and stoned / He ruled his domain and he died on the throne.”

Both come off so goofy that they feel more like the sort of things you’d find on a Weird Al record than an Alice Cooper one. Then again, with the holier-than-thou tone of “Disgraceland (“When they found me dead / The whole world was stunned / Went to the pearly gates / Said, ‘I'm the hippest thing’ / And Peter said ‘Well son, / We already got ourselves a king”) and the confusing message of “It’s Much Too Late” (is Cooper really invoking the ugly fundamentalist Christian belief that even good people are still damned if they don’t accept Jesus as their lord and savior? ‘cause it kind of sounds that way), these two songs might as well be the musical equivalent of a Chick Tract.

Nothing proves uglier than album-closer “The Sentinel,” though, and unlike those other tracks, one can’t point to humor as the biggest problem here. Told from the point-of-view of a Middle Eastern terrorist, “The Sentinel” is about as serious a theme as Cooper has ever tackled. Recorded prior to 9/11 but released mere weeks after, this one could hardly have come at a worst time. As deliberately controversy-baiting as it seems, though, the concept has potential; “The Sentinel” could very well have explored the psychology behind extremism and perhaps even exposed some uncomfortable truths about human nature and Western hypocrisy to boot. Instead, we get cringe-worthy lines like “There's something disturbin' going on in my turban” which reek of crude, if (hopefully) unintentional, racism.

And yet from a musical point of view “The Sentinel” is stellar, an ominous bone-chiller that slithers like a snake in tall grass before latching onto you and sinking its fangs in.

That, in a nutshell, sums up the legacy of both Brutal Planet and Dragontown. Sonically, both albums are underrated triumphs of infectious songwriting. They arguably have only one flat-out musical dud between them (Dragontown’s ballad “Every Woman Has a Name” is another shameless attempt to recapture the spirit of Welcome to My Nightmare’s “Only Women Bleed,” but unlike Brutal Planet’s “Take It Like a Woman” this one wallows in insipid blandness). “Fantasy Man” sneers with punk rock arrogance, “Sister Sara” writhes with venomous sexuality, and “Somewhere in the Jungle” alternately broods and soars with the same kind of apocalyptic swagger that made “Pick Up the Bones” so impressive.

Lyrically, however, these albums contain some of the absolute worst writing Cooper has ever churned out, covering the entire spectrum of awfulness from dull to corny, tactless to tasteless, smugly superior to morally reprehensible.

Interestingly, Cooper has gone on record in more than a few interviews stating that he thinks entertainers like him shouldn’t get political. And while that outlook seems needlessly limiting and prescriptive, maybe the man has a point, at least in regards to his own work. After all, there are no shortage of artists like The Dead Kennedys, Rage Against the Machine, Public Enemy, and Bob Dylan who serve as shining examples of music-as-social-commentary done very, very right. Unfortunately, Cooper’s efforts to similarly imbue his shock rock aesthetic with some ripped-from-the-headlines relevance proved far clunkier.

For all its flaws, Dragontown, like Brutal Planet before it, represents an exceptionally strange and fascinating period in one of the overall strangest and most fascinating careers of any musician in rock history. Future Cooper records would be more well-received, not to mention artistically coherent, but few would be as interesting and fewer still would offer such a sustained warts-and-all look at the naked face of the man behind the make-up.

Neither Brutal Planet nor Dragontown may be particularly strong Alice Cooper albums, but they are undeniably eye-opening Vincent Furnier albums.