Alice Cooper - Dragontown review
| Band: | Alice Cooper |
| Album: | Dragontown |
| Style: | Hard rock, Heavy metal, Glam rock |
| Release date: | 2001 |
01. Triggerman
02. Deeper
03. Dragontown
04. Sex, Death And Money
05. Fantasy Man
06. Somewhere In The Jungle
07. Disgraceland
08. Sister Sara
09. Every Woman Has A Name
10. I Just Wanna Be God
11. It's Much Too Late
12. I Am The Sentinel
Alice Cooper boldly announced his continued relevance in the 21st century with the scathing, murderous Brutal Planet - an unprecedentedly heavy album that told us all to sit down, shut up, and hope for death. Sensing the pure genius of this formula, Alice dredged up from hell another album's worth of material done in the same style. Dragontown is another brutal slideshow of death and destruction laid overtop cold, industrial riffs, and therefore should be examined primarily as a counterpart to Brutal Planet.
If more evidence were needed that you'll love Alice when he's angry, Dragontown slithers demonically from track to track with vindictive venom and menacing riffs to knock you six feet underground. "Triggerman" kicks off explosively, carving swaths of destruction with riffs and melodies that manage to be both crushing and memorable. Near the end, it double-times into thrash territory, yet another unforeseen tidbit of experimentation from the master of shock rock. As with Brutal Planet, the lyrics read like the manifesto of Jigsaw or Kevin Spacey in Se7en. Overall, however, the tone of Dragontown diverges from its predecessor.
Some songs, such as the strangely upbeat "Fantasy Man" and the rockabilly-inspired "Disgraceland," revert to Alice Cooper's trademark brand of twisted humor. While still much heavier and slightly more sinister than Alice's typical material, they resurrect his gleeful, schlocky spirit for a few brief minutes.
Where Brutal Planet was saturated with rage, wrath, and spite, Dragontown is downright unsettling. Expanding on the creepier elements of the last album, songs such as "I Just Wanna Be God," "Sister Sara," and the title track will take your soul for a ride it could never prepare for. No judgment, visceral sarcasm, or harsh realities stacked out this time around - Dragontown lives to elicit screams, not moral examination. "Deeper" is bloody terrifying. This is the sort of thing you can't listen to alone at night.
As I explained in my review of Brutal Planet, at this point in time Alice abandoned much of his vaudevillian antics in favor of something more deeply, luminously evil. With a few exceptions, Dragontown leaves the days of School's Out far behind in the dust, no longer interested in pranks and tricks when it can genuinely unnerve listeners.
Dragontown and its predecessor serve up the best one-two punch in Alice Cooper's discography since Love It To Death and Killer a full 30 years prior. It's a shame that Alice only crafted a duology out of this material, as it not only defends his hard-earned reputation, but proves that the man can tirelessly re-invent himself.
Rating breakdown
| Performance: | 10 |
| Songwriting: | 9 |
| Originality: | 6 |
| Production: | 8 |
 | Written on 20.08.2014 by I'm the reviewer, and that means my opinion is correct. |
Rating:
7.2
7.2
|
Rating: 7.2 |
Say what you want about Mr. Cooper, but the man knows how to keep up with the times. While it doesn't always work out to the best advantage, he always knows how to keep his signature sound in amongst this change. Dragontown is the second part in his Brutal Planet saga which is based around the simple concept of morality and sin - the lyrical content of the album having the ability to be interpreted in many different ways. With this Brutal Planet saga we see the music of Alice Cooper ironically borrow a lot of different qualities from his successors in the shock rock genre. Any trace of the proto-punk sound that remained in Alice's music for quite some time is almost completely washed away and replaced by heavy metal riffs with a touch of industrial thrown in; a la Rob Zombie. The impressive part about this direction Alice has taken his music in is just how natural it sounds, as if he's been playing this style for ages. One song that sticks out as a great example of how comfortable Alice Cooper sounds with this type of music is the track "Disgraceland" - a dark humoured tale about Elvis Presley, where he manages to combine rockabilly, heavy metal, and the previously mentioned touch of industrial, all put together seamlessly. Though there's nothing groundbreaking about any aspects of the album, the production and musicianship is damn near flawless - nothing seems out of place, no instruments dominate annoyingly over one another. Read more ›› |
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