Alice Cooper - Brutally Live
Performance 
Production
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Alice Cooper - Brutally Live
Performance |
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The stage is still ominously darkened, as a large, metal box, elevated several feet off the ground, is rolled up to the front of the stage. The two front doors of the box are opened to reveal "The Controller", a hideous looking creature of a man, with long, scraggly, gray hair...wait a minute, isn't that the guitarist from Yes? No it can't be, because this thing's rotting upper torso is only connected to an exposed spinal column and pelvic bone. Then again, I never HAVE seen Steve Howe with his shirt off. Hmmm. Actually it looks a little more like Dio, to be fair, but I digress. Here begins Alice Cooper's vision of Brutal Planet. And what an epic vision it is. The stage is wonderfully decked out as a post-apocalyptic wasteland reminiscent of the Escape From New York movie set. The music is fittingly brutal as well, especially the new stuff. Cooper's music has actually gotten heavier with each new album, and Brutal Planet is probably the heaviest of them all. Considering that they perform SEVEN songs from the new album, this makes for one serious heavy metal encounter. The concert was filmed July 19th, 2000 at the Apollo Hammersmith in London, during Cooper's tour in support of the Brutal Planet album. By the way, you'll notice that I file this DVD under "C" for Cooper, since Vincent Furnier has officially been Alice Cooper for a long time now, and the Alice Cooper "band" has been dead for just as long. Five of the first eight songs performed were from the new album, which was either a bold move or a stupid move on Cooper's part, considering that his legend is owed primarily to his great 1970's output. His confidence in the Brutal Planet material was clearly evident here, and this confidence was easily vindicated, because the Brutal Planet songs are some of his best in the past 15 years, and the audience appeared to have no problem waiting a little while to get to the real classics. The show opened with the very dark and heavy title track from Brutal Planet, and then led into "Gimme", the single from the new album. The first monster classic, I'm Eighteen, was not until the fifth song of the night, and featured incredible solos from each of Cooper's two excellent guitarists. Cooper's voice was in fine form this night, and his band was exceptionally tight. The band's energy from the new songs carried over to the classics, giving them a heavier, more modern sounding update, while still respecting the classic sound. The theatrical element of the show really kicked into gear during the performance of the classic "Dead Babies". Alice is singing the song while pushing around a pretty blue baby carriage, and then suddenly yanks out a hideous, deformed, two-headed creature, whose heads looked like a baby werewolf, and the baby from the "It's Alive" movie. Much to the crowd's delight, Alice quickly impales the poor creature on a stake. Soon after, several men, and a sexy nurse character, expertly played by Cooper's own daughter, Calico, enter the scene and place Alice in a white straightjacket, as the classic "Ballad Of Dwight Fry" is being played. Alice eventually escapes from the straightjacket, strangles the nurse, and is then recaptured by the guards and sentenced to the guillotine, where his head is ceremoniously chopped off. "I Love The Dead" is performed as the executioner struts around the stage with Alice's bloody head. Damn, I'm so glad I grew up loving rock and roll, instead of Country music. Where else could you see this kind of fine entertainment, all backed by a world class heavy-metal rock band?! I won't give away all of the silly theatrics you get to see here, but these were some of the highlights. Most of this stuff has all been done a thousand times before, by Alice, so it will be nothing new to most hardcore Cooper fans. I have never seen Alice Cooper live before, and have only seen snippets of some of his concerts on video, so this was all a fresh treat for me. Cooper eventually played all of his classic hit songs, and even turned in a great cover of the Who's "My Generation" during the encore. He made the song sound like it was written especially for him. This concert showed a man who was still at the top of his game - a game he invented and many others have emulated. At one point Cooper takes a jab at some of his imitators when he comments on all of the Manson, Ozzy, and Kiss tee-shirts being worn in the audience, and refers to them as "all of my disobedient children". Touché! The overall production quality of this DVD is phenomenal, falling just slightly short of a perfect rating. The picture is presented in a crystal clear, anamorphically enhanced widescreen presentation that perfectly captures the magnitude of the Brutal Planet stage show. The picture was generally very sharp and the colors were rich, with only the occasional blurry camera shot. The sound quality was as good as any hard rock concert DVD I have heard. The DTS 5.0 surround mix is the most impressive audio track, allowing the twin guitar attack to roar through loud and clear, and providing deep, driving bass output, even with the lack of a .1 LFE channel. The surround channels received a good workout with this mix, as the guitars and keyboards could sometimes be heard equally loud from the rear speakers. The Dolby 5.0 surround mix was almost equally impressive, but did not match the bass output and overall power of the DTS mix. Hell, even the stereo mix sounded excellent, for all of you non-surround-equipped looosers. Somebody did, however, dropped the ball during the production of this DVD when they forgot to encode time information on the disk. This means that during playback, your player doesn't display the correct track number or any time elapsed reading. There is only one other significant flaw, where during "School's Out" a single frame has the top third duplicated at the bottom of the screen. This only happens when viewing the main camera angle, and not on the alternate "Alice Cam" angle. These alternate angles were provided for six different tracks, but were not particularly impressive, since they just maintained a close-up of Cooper's face. This is a very satisfying concert DVD for any fan of Alice Cooper, both old and new. All of the legendary stage theatrics are there, and all of the greatest hits are performed. Fans that joined the Alice bandwagon during his late 80's revival will enjoy the inclusion of "Poison", the smash hit from his successful Trash album of 1989, which thrust Cooper back into the limelight, as well as "Feed My Frankenstein", from the follow-up Hey Stupid album, which kept him there. Brutal Planet has proven that the aging Alice Cooper can still easily out-rock most of the younger rock bands out there, especially those "disobedient children" off his. Reviewed by Paul M. Roy - June 2004 |
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Set List |
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Running Time: 96 Minutes |
DVD Release Date - December 2000 |