Alice Cooper, 'Welcome 2 My Nightmare' -- Album Review
Friday, November 18, 2011 at 12:01AM 
Alice Cooper has recently released Welcome 2 My Nightmare, a sequel to the earlier Welcome to My Nightmare, thus making it hard for anyone who ever wants to request either album verbally, instead of on the web. I'm not sure I saw the point initially, but the album does reunite him with Bob Ezrin and with the surviving members of his band, and I guess it provided a template for the sort of sound he was looking for, a pre admission that he was reliving a past era, instead of opening himself to that as a criticism. I basically love this album, I think it does a good job of being a similar set of songs, without sounding like a lesser version, or like no risks were taken.
The track list as as follows:
"I Am Made of You" is a simple piano song that introduces the album.
"Caffeine" is a good up tempo rock song.
"The Nightmare Returns" is a piano segue with some orchestrated bits, not a real song.
"Runaway Train" is another 70's style rock song.
"Last Man on Earth" is a vaudeville sounding song. I almost expect to hear a kazoo.
"The Congregation" sounds like 70s Alice Cooper band, although the spoken breakdown is more modern sounding.
"I'll Bite Your Face Off" is classic 70s hard rock.
"Disco Bloodbath Boogie Fever" is a send up of disco. It's good fun, one of my favorite tracks.
"Ghouls Gone Wild" sounds like a beach party song gone nuts.
"Something to Remember Me By" is the obligatory ballad. I think there's a law that every Alice CD contains one.
"When Hell Comes Home" is about a kid scared of his abusive father coming home. The music is very creepy and this is a definite highlight of the album
"What Baby Wants" follows, and is definitely the best song on the CD. A more modern rock sound ( but still not "modern," just post 70s ).
"I Gotta Get Out of Here" is more of a filler, story line track although it is still rock. It sums up the story line.
"The Underture" has elements of the original songs, and is an orchestral rock track that ties all the songs together, without any lyrics. It's epic, but it's filler.
"Under the Bed" is the bonus track on the Classic Rock edition. It starts slow with piano and then fills out, it's a very epic song that fits the album very well, it's kind of odd it was not included in the normal release.
The Classic Rock edition also has a live version of "Poison," but that is obviously meaningless filler.
I guess most Alice fans have this already, but if you don't have the Classic Rock version, I recommend it, the usual poster/pin/magazine combo and at least one good bonus track. Alice changes his sound a lot, I think this album benefits from being based on an earlier template, so you know what you're getting from the start. Most of this album sounds exactly like 70's Alice Cooper, which is no bad thing, and the few modern touches are not out of place, but just round off giving this album it's own personality and value as an addition to the Alice canon.
Reader Comments (8)
The whole disc is fantastic. Can't wait to see him live in December.
Gotta say, the lead "single" (is there such a thing anymore in our largely ignored favorite genre?), "Bite Your Face Off", is a kind of Stones knock-off, which is my only pet peeve about some of Alice's music throughout the years.
But most of it -- the best of it -- is pure Alice and stands alone as some of the best and most groundbreaking Rock and Roll in history and some of the earliest examples of Glam Metal ever!
Again, Christian, a Slash's top hat off (hey, where did Slash get
that idea?!) for posting about this important recent release (and I agree about Kee$ha and Fergie. They ROCK!, surprisingly).