heavy metal

Alice Cooper is both the name of an American rock band formed in Phoenix, Arizona, in 1964 and subsequently the name of the band's lead singer (born Vince Furnier) who legally changed his name to Alice Cooper and had a solo career under that name after the band became inactive in 1975.

Alice Cooper, the band consisted of lead singer Vince Furnier (stage name Alice Cooper), Glen Buxton (lead guitar), Michael Bruce (rhythm guitar, keyboards), Dennis Dunaway (bass guitar), and Neal Smith (drums). After several years of little success, the band rose to fame in 1971 with the hit single "I'm Eighteen" and the album Love It to Death. Success continued with the popular single "School's Out" and the album of the same name in 1972. The band peaked in popularity in 1973. After the breakup in 1975, Vincent Furnier took "Alice Cooper" as his own name. Bruce, Dunaway and Smith went on to form the short-lived band Billion Dollar Babies.

Alice Cooper (born Vincent Damon Furnier, February 4, 1948) is an American rock singer, songwriter, and musician whose career spans five decades. With a stage show that features guillotines, electric chairs, fake blood, boa constrictors, and baby dolls, he is considered by fans and peers alike to be "The Godfather of Shock Rock"; Cooper has drawn equally from horror movies, vaudeville, and garage rock to pioneer a grandly theatrical and macabre brand of rock designed to shock.

Originating in Phoenix in the late 1960s after Furnier moved from Detroit, Alice Cooper was originally a band consisting of Furnier on vocals and harmonica, lead guitarist Glen Buxton, Michael Bruce on rhythm guitar, Dennis Dunaway on bass guitar, and drummer Neal Smith. The original Alice Cooper band broke into the international music mainstream with the 1971 hit "I'm Eighteen" from the album Love It to Death, which was followed by the even bigger single "School's Out" in 1972 which reached No 1 in the UK. The band reached their commercial peak with the 1973 album Billion Dollar Babies.

Furnier adopted the band's name as his own name in the 1970s and began a solo career with the 1975 concept album Welcome to My Nightmare. In 2011 he released Welcome 2 My Nightmare, his 22th album as a solo artist. Expanding from his Detroit rock roots, in his career Cooper has experimented with a number of musical styles, including conceptual rock, art rock, hard rock, heavy metal, new wave, pop rock, experimental rock and industrial rock.

He released the album "Paranormal" in 2017. It contains 2 new tracks with the original members of the Alice Cooper Band from the early '70s. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.

Machine Head is an American heavy metal band from Oakland, California. The band was formed in 1991 by vocalist/guitarist Robb Flynn and bassist Adam Duce. The band's aggressive musicianship made it one of the pioneering bands in the new wave of American heavy metal, and it is also considered to be part of the second wave of thrash metal bands from the 1990s. Machine Head's current lineup comprises Flynn and bassist Jared MacEachern. Duce, guitarists Logan Mader, Ahrue Luster and Phil Demmel and drummers Tony Costanza, Chris Kontos and Dave McClain are former members of the band; Mader and Kontos are currently touring with the band as part of the 25th anniversary tour for its first album, Burn My Eyes (1994).

Machine Head's first four albums earned the band a growing fan base in Europe, however the band would not have success in their native United States until later releases. The band drew controversy with its fourth album, Supercharger (2001), released three weeks after the September 11 attacks, which resulted in the album's only single, "Crashing Around You", and its music video (which featured burning buildings) being pulled from all media outlets. The band nearly disbanded in 2002 after negotiating off its label Roadrunner Records as a result of the controversy, however the band would eventually re-sign with the label.

Having experimented with elements of groove metal and nu metal in its early releases, Machine Head changed to a more traditional thrash metal sound and longer songs with its sixth album, The Blackening (2007), which drew critical acclaim and was chosen as Album of the Decade by Metal Hammer in 2010; the album's first single, "Aesthetics of Hate", also earned the band its first Grammy Award nomination. The band achieved similar success with its following two albums, Unto the Locust (2011) and Bloodstone & Diamonds (2014), before returning to its nu metal roots with the release of its ninth album, Catharsis (2018).

Machine Head has released nine studio albums, two live albums, one video album, 13 singles and 15 music videos. Four of the band's studio albums have been certified silver in the United Kingdom, and the band's highest peak on the Billboard 200 came with Bloodstone & Diamonds at number 21. To date, the band has sold over three million records worldwide.

Studio albums
Burn My Eyes (1994)
The More Things Change... (1997)
The Burning Red (1999)
Supercharger (2001)
Through the Ashes of Empires (2003)
The Blackening (2007)
Unto the Locust (2011)
Bloodstone & Diamonds (2014)
Catharsis (2018) Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.