Alice Gets Brutal
by Martin Popoff
Alice Cooper's new album Brutal Planet is due out on Spitfire Records in June. Produced by Bob Marlette and featuring Alice, Bob, Ryan Roxie and ex-Kiss, long-time Alice drummer Eric Singer, Brutal Planet is a concept album of "social fiction" featuring the following tracks: 'Gimmie', 'Take It Like A Woman', 'Brutal Planet', 'Pessi-mystic', 'Wicked Young Man',' It's The Little Things', 'Sanctuary', 'Pick Up The Bones', 'Eat Some More', 'Blow Me A Kiss' and 'Cold Machine'. The Japanese bonus track is called 'Can't Sleep, Clowns Will Eat Me'.
The man behind Alice gives us this exclusive on the lyrical thrust of the new record. "The last thing that I had written was The Last Temptation, which again was very novelistic, almost Something Wicked This Way Comes, and before that, I've always tried to write in concepts. And I said, you know, I've never really written anything science fiction, and I wanted this one to be in the form of a futuristic novel. So Brutal Planet is basically what this planet is going to turn into. Amd I have to go not by what I feel. I'm very optimistic. Alice is very pessimistic. I have to write the way Alice would think. He thinks we're flying toward a brick wall at 100 miles per hour. And he kind of would like to be there and see what happens at the end. This is Alice's state of the world address, a future state of the world address. But I like the fact that a lot of these things he sees are things that are going on now. In that sense it's not really science fiction but social fiction, or put another way, future horror."
On the record's moral tone, Alice offers the following. "I think that's always there. I don't think you have to look for it, I think it's always there. I think there is always a moral level to everything. No matter what it is, there is morality, whether it's Frankenstein or Dracula, there is always a moral, good and evil. And I think this evil here on Brutal Planet is just man destroying the place and likely not fixing the damage."
