10 Most Disturbing Hard Rock Songs Ever Released
2. Cold Ethyl - Alice Cooper
When it comes to horror mixed with rock and roll, Alice Cooper is pretty much the godfather of shock rock. While other acts like Screaming Jay Hawkins may have set the stage for how theatrical you could go in pop music, the amount of disturbing imagery Cooper packed into every show sparked excitement in fans and vitriol in parents. The songs may have been decent hard rock, but things take a drastic turn if you take a peek behind the curtain.
Compared to Alice's previous output, the Welcome to my Nightmare album is a bit tamer, with the songs sounding more like a Broadway show than a hard rock band. On the other hand, "Cold Ethyl" taps into something you probably wouldn't find in your average stage production. From a structural standpoint, all the steps are there, with a rock and roll boogie driving the song as Alice talks about the pleasures of his muse Ethyl.
Nothing too wrong there...except when you realize that Ethyl is dead. In an instant, what you thought was just complaints of a girlfriend giving you the cold shoulder is instead the cold touch of taking a corpse out of morgue and doing extremely unsettling things to it. Alice Cooper may have toned down the musical side of things, but the fact that this song is played in such a happy manner makes the entire thing seem much more disturbing in context.