Your Favorite Alice album rankings from 2000 to Present

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Re: Your Favorite Alice album rankings from 2000 to Present

Post by I'm Pain » Mon Aug 21, 2017 2:01 am

1. Dirty Diamonds.
2. Brutal Planet.
3. Paranormal.
4. The Eyes of Alice Cooper.
5. Dragontown.
6. Hollywood Vampires.
7. Along Came a Spider
8. Welcome 2 some silly stuff.

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Re: Your Favorite Alice album rankings from 2000 to Present

Post by Shoesalesman » Mon Aug 21, 2017 4:44 pm

1. Brutal Planet
2. Dirty Diamonds
3. W2MN
4. Paranormal
5. TEOAC
6. ACAS

7. Dragontown

3 and 4 could be switched, depending on the week.
Don't like Dragontown touching the others.
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Re: Your Favorite Alice album rankings from 2000 to Present

Post by kevinuk81 » Mon Aug 21, 2017 7:16 pm

Shoey, is Dragontown bottom of your list because of 1 particular song or is it the whole album?
Anything I say or write is my own personal opinion, no matter who agrees or disagrees with me.

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Re: Your Favorite Alice album rankings from 2000 to Present

Post by pitkin88 » Tue Aug 22, 2017 1:20 am

1) Paranormal.
2) Brutal Planet
3) TEOAC
4) Dirty Diamonds
5) W2MN

6) Dragontown 1 good song
7) ACAS ( unlistenable )

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Re: Your Favorite Alice album rankings from 2000 to Present

Post by Shoesalesman » Wed Aug 23, 2017 3:28 pm

kevinuk81 wrote:Shoey, is Dragontown bottom of your list because of 1 particular song or is it the whole album?
The album IMO lacks cohesion, stability. The good songs (and there are three or four really good quality ones) are balanced with "meh" ones, with Deeper dragging the whole thing down. The album is polarized that way and it drives me bananas. But don't get me wrong, it's my least favorite because there are no AC albums I outright dislike. It's an OK album, just has the least amount of gems on it. If Deeper wasn't on it, it would still be at the bottom of my list.

But it could touch the other ones. :)
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Re: Your Favorite Alice album rankings from 2000 to Present

Post by darkmenace » Wed Aug 23, 2017 5:41 pm

Shoesalesman wrote:it's my least favorite because there are no AC albums I outright dislike. It's an OK album, just has the least amount of gems on it.
I agree on Dragontown as a whole, but Deeper is my favorite cut on the album. I like the lyrics and imagery although the repeating chorus at the end is a bit monotonous.

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Re: Your Favorite Alice album rankings from 2000 to Present

Post by steve » Fri Aug 25, 2017 4:23 am

1. Paranormal - Can't stop listening to it - brilliant
2. Brutal Planet-
3. Dirty Diamonds
4. Dragontown
5. Eyes of Alice Cooper
6. Welcome 2 My Nightmare
7. Along Came A Spider

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Re: Your Favorite Alice album rankings from 2000 to Present

Post by Mr. Misdemeanor » Fri Dec 02, 2022 10:28 pm

01. Brutal Planet
02. Dirty Diamonds
03. Paranormal
04. Dragontown


All four of these albums are great, imo. Honestly, I probably wouldn't say any of them are better than the others, just different. Right this second, I'd put them in this order but you can't go wrong with any of them.

05. The Eyes of Alice Cooper ( a lot of good songs, but few great ones)

06. Detroit Stories (I like about half the songs here. 7 or 8 good to great songs ain't bad.)

07. Welcome 2 My Nightmare (a tough one to judge, but there are a few good tracks here)

08. Along Came a Spider (I only like two tracks on this one - Vengeance Is Mine & Wake the Dead, but there are two bonus tracks that I dig Shadow of Yourself & I'll Still Be There which improves my overall opinion of the album.

09. Hollywood Vampires (This should be great, but isn't. I like My Generation, but there are only a couple of half-way decent tracks after that.

10. Hollywood Vampires Rise (I don't care for this one at all.)

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Re: Your Favorite Alice album rankings from 2000 to Present

Post by Saint&Sinner » Sat Dec 03, 2022 3:17 am

As this thread is revisited i have revised my list for 20221.

1. Brutal Planet - near perfect, scratch the (admittedly good) ballad off the album and its a winner through and through i just never felt the ballad worked with the flow.
2. W2MN - A superb album with only 1 or 2 duds. The highs are some of the best of his career.
3. Paranormal - only one bad song (holy water) and a great album. Annoyingly the standard CD is better than the deluxe one as the two ACG tracks are relegated to a "bonus" CD which really kills the flow.
4. Dragontown - once again, inconsistent, I find the first half great with the rest being an uneven mess with a handful of great tunes falling victim to poor track ordering. I always felt that on dragontown he already had one foot in the garage rock of the eyes.
5. Detroit stories - Too many covers, with some strong highlights but again its too scattershot with no good through line.
6. The eyes of Alice Cooper - inconsistant, some great tunes but its so scatter shot it makes listening to it too hard.
7. Dirty Diamonds / Along came a spider - joint last of the proper alice albums. they are both a mess with horrible production and generally poor song writing. both have a couple of songs i like but i dont enjoy either.

Hollywood vampires Rise - Better than the debut but by a thin margin. For all of Alice preaching about how good Johnny Depp is as a guitar player- this album is largely a Depp project and doesn't show him in a good light : this is ridiculously basic, plodding, boring riffs. allice's voice manages to raise a couple of tracks up higher but its hard work.
Hollywood vampires - rubbish, no idea who it is for or what the point is. I kinda like having a schools out with the brick in the wall worked into it, but then you unfortunately get brian johnson screeching over it and completely ruining it.

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Re: Your Favorite Alice album rankings from 2000 to Present

Post by Si » Sat Dec 03, 2022 7:45 am

For what it's worth:

1. WTMN (inc Under The Bed)
Yes, the cover photo is dreadful (should have been artwork), but apart from that Ezrin's return promised so much and initially delivered... Best AC album since at least TLT.
2. Dragontown
I know some people hate this album but for me the diversity of material is the advantage it has over BP. Plus 'Sister Sara' is on it!
3. Brutal Planet
Arguably a brave new approach which surprisingly worked, but lacks DT's diversity in that it's unrelentingly dark.
4. Rise
I just like it! It wasn't perfect but leaps and bounds ahead of the first one, in that I think JP/TH seem to have a genuine connection, and in 'Mr Spider' they write a better Alice Cooper song then Alice has in recent years!
5. Dirty Diamonds
Not perfect (no pun intended) but a great diverse selection of material. A few songs could have been done slightly differently to make them really great but all around a good record.
6. Eyes
Nothing really wrong with it but I don't remember the last time I listened to it and that is the main reason it's low on the list, not because it's a bad album.
7. Paranormal
An 'okay' album that rarely ever lifts off. The title tracks is a mismatch of random riffs (often stolen) that goes nowhere and much of the playing is pretty average especially the sometimes awful drumming choices. Why use stand ins and celebrities stunt casting instead of using your own band who are MUCH better (OG's aside).

Last: Along Came a Spider, Detroit Stories, Hollywood Vampires
Hollywood Vampires had it's moments ie the original songs, which showed great promise, but generally the idea of a covers album doesn't really appeal. Again works better as a collection of b-sides and outtakes rather than a stand along album.
ACAS is just a very poor album with dreadful production choices. All the handclaps and tambourines louder then the vocals and guitars. What could be a few decent songs under Ezrin are just thrown away by repetition. As someone else said the two bonus tracks are better then much of what made the album.
Detroit Stories is just dull and lacking imagination. Has one truly awful track, but as with Paranormal much of it would be great b-sides or outtakes while the whole just doesn't have any spark. Having said that I've not played it since the day it was released... If it wasn't an AC album I wouldn't have looked at it twice.

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Re: Your Favorite Alice album rankings from 2000 to Present

Post by Saint&Sinner » Sat Dec 03, 2022 8:21 pm

After reading what you put about rise i gave it another go.
I think the issue is editing. some of the songs have potential - "i want my now" for instance is a good 3 minute rocker that is actually quite good but they manage to stretch it into 7minutes!! its awful by the end of it. I think that's the real issue maybe a 8 or 9 track album would have been pretty good if the songs were edited by an actual producer/writer like bob ezrin (even Mr spider which is largely a good tracks could have at least a minute cut out) and then rubbish like "welcome to bushwakers" was scratched off the disc.
I appreciate they all get on and are loving just making music but someone had to be the bad guy and edit/cut it all down.

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Re: Your Favorite Alice album rankings from 2000 to Present

Post by Si » Sat Dec 03, 2022 10:51 pm

Saint&Sinner wrote:
Sat Dec 03, 2022 8:21 pm
After reading what you put about rise i gave it another go.
I think the issue is editing. some of the songs have potential - "i want my now" for instance is a good 3 minute rocker that is actually quite good but they manage to stretch it into 7minutes!! its awful by the end of it.
I think the extra length is what makes it BETTER. Sick of potentially great songs being cut down to 3 minutes..
This is one of my biggest complaints about recent AC albums. The songs never get to breath or stretch out,. It's all "verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, verse chorus and end". It's boring. If the original band had stuck to such a formula we would never have had Black Juju, My Star, Killer, Dead Babies etc etc.

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Re: Your Favorite Alice album rankings from 2000 to Present

Post by Saint&Sinner » Sun Dec 04, 2022 12:49 am

I'm with you in theory, and i do agree that Alice should let his musicians stretch out a bit more like they did in the 70s and 80s but Johnny Depp and co extend the songs in the same vein as Marilyn Mansons worst excesses. Just repeat a dirge noise and loop it for a prolonged ending.
I must say tho i have enjoyed it more digging into it after your recommendation. Maybe i don't have expectations of an actual Alice album. I'm still not a fan but i at least managed to pick out a few tunes i liked more this time.

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Re: Your Favorite Alice album rankings from 2000 to Present

Post by concolz » Mon Dec 05, 2022 11:07 am

1. Brutal Planet His best ever solo album IMO. Fire & brimstone finger-pointing never sounded so epic.
2. ACAS This gets a lot of flak, but I loved it from the start and still do. All songs are memorable, and there's an underlying glam stomp throughout. Production-wise I much prefer 'amateurish' over Ezrin's kitchen sink polishings.

And that's it! The rest can be ranked under the 'meh' umbrella. Dragontown has a great first half, but then falls apart at Sister Sara, limping to the finish with retreads of ideas much better expressed on BP. WTMN2 follows a similar trajectory. It completely implodes with the back-to-back 'comedy' tracks, and, although When Hell Comes Home is the best song on the album, the rest of the last half is absymal. As for Eyes & DD, a small handful of goodies plus a load of knockabout non-entities.

The Hollywood Vampires albums are just plain awful. 'Classic' rawk. Yuk. The most recent two, Paranormal & DS, have a couple of standouts - Paranoiac Personality & I Hate You in particular - but much is simply bog standard rock. DS is diverse but the songs are still underwhelming. Anyone could have made these two records; there's virtually no Alice 'signature' imprint on them. And why is Ezrin so seemingly obsessed with guests & outside writers? I can't see how any of them contributed one positive thing.

Post-Warners the only pre-2000 album I rate is TLT. I don't hold out much hope for the 'road' album. The (possible) reunion album seems a better bet; if Ezrin can resist the guests & polishings and allow the band to stretch out.

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