​The Eyes Of Alice Cooper By Nathaniel Kinsey

 
I remember the long gap between 1994's excellent Alice Cooper album The Last Temptation ( which I bought on cassette at Kmart after seeing the video for "Lost in America" on Beavis and Butthead) and 2000's Brutal Planet. 
 
Alice had been threatening a new album for a long time in the pages of Metal Edge magazine and when it finally came it was the kind of comeback like when he embraced heavy metal in the late 80's with Constrictor.  This was the heaviest Alice album to date, even heavier than Raise Your Fist and Yell.  The nu metal sound had never been to my taste but Alice did a good job with it like he pretty much does with everything, from disco to New Wave to pop metal. 
 
The next album,  Dragontown was good but I felt it was a watered down version of Brutal Planet.  After seeing the Dragontown concert I thought to myself-- "That was cool but I really wish that Alice would return to his roots". I didn't have to wait very long.  A brief two years later Alice granted my wish releasing the very rootsy The Eyes of Alice Cooper.
 
From the opening cut "What Do You Want From Me" I knew I was in for some classic Alice.  In 2003 a new crop of garage rock bands like the Strokes, the Hives and others were bringing back a back-to-basics sound and Alice, always one to stay current jumped on that bandwagon but ironically by staying current he got closer to the sound of his 1970's hey day than he had been since that time.  Lyrically,  Alice was as clever as ever with witty lines like " I'm stuck somewhere between high school and the old school" and "The Song That Didn't Rhyme" in which a fictitious band writes a song so bad that Billboard declared it a crime!
 
 Elsewhere on the song, "Detroit City" he pays homage to his Detroit roots by name checking Bob Seger, Iggy Pop to name a few. He even had Wayne Kramer of the MC5 guest on guitar. Of course we have the obligatory Alice ballad "Be with You Awhile" which is great. Alice always did have a way with a ballad.  And there's the usual just plain odd Alice song "This House is Haunted" which conjures up images of Alice's favorite holiday...Halloween of course.
 
His next album, in the same fashion as Dragontown followed Brutal Planet,  was the same vibe but a little weake, in my opinion. All in all The Eyes of Alice Cooper is my favorite of his latter day albums. I love them all but this one has a special place in my heart.  If you've never heard this album, give it a listen.  And if you listened to it back then but maybe forgot about it, give it another shot.  Maybe you'll love it so much that you'll go insane like my friend Heavy Metal Kurt and buy all 4 of the different cd covers, each one featuring Alice's eyes in a different color!

Bio: 
Nathaniel Kinsey is a rocker of the highest caliber. He lives and breathes rock & roll.  He has the best colelction of vintage rock shirts in the world and a record entitled Making The Most Out Of Nothing. You should reach out to him about buying a copy because it's pretty goddamn great. If you're too cheap for that you can listen to it via streaming sites or on Youtube. He lives in the wilds of Pennsylvania where he battles the Amish for claim of your soul.

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