Warthur
Alice Cooper's lucrative glam metal phase was beginning to wear thin, so his next step was to inject his approach with a heavy dose of industrial-tinged traditional metal (seeing how Marilyn Manson had done so well with combining that with Cooper's shock-rock theatricality). The end result of this is Brutal Planet, which adds a little crunch to the proceedings and sees Cooper in a somewhat more serious mood. The lyrical topics tackle a variety of social ills - xenophobia, sexism, and so on - through the lens of Cooper's own Christian faith, which he declares fairly adamantly on the title track.
It isn't as groundbreaking, memorable, catchy or entertaining as the trashy glam rock proto-metal classics of Cooper's back catalogue, but at the same time the album proves that you can be a Christian heavy metal artist who expresses their faith through their music without becoming a mouthpiece for right-wing social policies or getting excessively preachy - and rock out hard whilst you do so. In that sense, it's arguably Cooper's most successful album for a long time.