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ALICE COOPER - The Nightmare Returns!

Track: Blow Me A Kiss (Track #5)
CD: Brutal Planet (Spitfire)
Time: 3:17 (C)

Alice is ready to unveil yet another chapter in his life of musical crimes, a stark and depressing view of his surroundings called Brutal Planet. With Bob Ezrin at the helm, Alice has created what he calls his heaviest record to date. And this past Thursday at the Webb Theatre in Phoenix, he unleashed the Brutal Planet stage show, reintroducing such rarities in the set list, as 'Black Widow', 'Go To Hell', 'Caught In A Dream' and 'Dead Babies'. As always, Alice was in his element, pulling some of his tricks that have been old hat since the '70s, but adding modern effects, including a new and improved guillotine that serves as a fitting finale. Cooper and his band of young upstarts include Eric Singer on drums, Ryan Roxie and Pete Freezin on guitar, Greg Smith on bass and Teddy 'Zigzag' Andreadis on keyboards.

Brutal Planet is out on May 23rd. The Japanese and Australian/New Zealand versions of the record will feature the bonus track, 'Can't Sleep, Clowns Will Eat Me'. The album is a stark and depressing view of his surroundings including such pointed topics as the Columbine shootings, present-day wartime, the abuse of women, gluttony and society's short fuse, all told in Alice's tongue-in-cheek nature."

"I've always made sure that Alice was politically incoherent," Cooper explains within the four walls of his Cooperstown restaurant in the heart of downtown Phoenix. "He doesn't belong in politics. He doesn't belong in social events at all. Some of the things that have happened in the news are so much heavier than anything I could write fiction wise. When you're talking about the futuristic feel of Brutal Planet and where we are going, it's almost impossible not to write what's going on now."

Musically Brutal Planet is as vicious as it is thematically, Cooper taken in by the current glut of new age metal, feeding off of industrialized beats and down-tuned, choking riffs.

"If you were going to write a record called Daisies And Flowers, then I'd be working with Burt Bacharach or somebody who was jazzy. When you are saying Brutal Planet, you better deliver Brutal Planet and I'm listening to bands like Rage Against The Machine, Korn, Limp Bizkit because I think they are really good at what they do. I'm still old school when it comes to things like Black Sabbath. I love that heaviness. We've always been on the verge of being that kind of band. We've always been a hard rock band, but sometimes we verge into that heavy, heavy, heavy stuff. I said, 'Brutal Planet can not be anything but the heaviest thing I've ever done.' Every time that we would soften up, Bob Ezrin would come in and go 'you can never use those chords, cause it's not brutal, it's not Brutal Planet. Your diluting it.'"