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Alice Cooper: Welcome 2 my nightmare

17/11/11 || revenant

Sequels. God I fucken loathe them. Be they music, movies or whatever, they are always guaranteed suckage. And, it seems, the longer the distance between the originals and the sequels, the worse the sequels are. Sure, there are outside factors that can impact sequels, such as cast members passing on (Jon Belushi & “Blues Brothers 2000”), age taking it’s toll on once perky breasts (Sharon Stone & “Basic Instinct 2”) or even a mysterious loss of IQ resulting in poor writing (George Lucas & the “Star Wars” prequels). Musically the challenge is even greater as musicians, and this is a broad generalisation, change their style over the years. Look at that awful mess Queensryche coughed up and called “Operation: Mindcrime 2”, or the dull “wicked” chug fests Iced Earth have vomited out.

So we turn to Alice Cooper and his sequel to “Welcome to My Nightmare” which is cleverly titled “Welcome 2 My Nightmare”. See that? He replaced the “to” with “2”. Right away you know there’s genius at work here. The original WTMN was released way way waaaaaaaaaay back in 1975, which is probably well before most of our readers were sperm swimming around in their father’s nutsack. Why, after so many years, does the sequel come now?

The answer lies in the music. This album, if anything, feels like a tribute to 70’s rock, be it old Alice Cooper or other rock musicians from the time. “I am Made of You” sounds like the Alice Cooper of old. “The Congregation” tributes The Beatles. “I’ll Bite Your Face Off” nods to The Rolling Stones. “Ghouls Gone Wild” is party surf rock, and so it goes on. Shit, there’s even a disco song in here, and it carries the personality of the man himself.

There’s only one problem: most of this album fucking sucks. Now I don’t say this lightly, but there are some music passages here that Mr Cooper should be massively ashamed of. I mean, this is the kind of bullshit you get on this disc:

1. On the opening track “I am Made of You” some idiot has gone crazy with the auto-tuner. I’m not just talking a slight adjustment here to clean his voice up, I’m talking “someone had an epileptic fit on the auto-tune machine” adjusting. Serious, what the fuck?

2. The chorus to “Caffeine”. What the fuck is that? Is he trying to emulate a teenage kid who’s voice keeps breaking?

3. “Disco Bloodbath Boogie Fever”. Holy goddammed shit this is bad. Remember that scene from “The Simpsons” when Homer tries to rap? And how Bart and Lisa begged him to stop? That scene comes to mind whenever I hear this. This is so awkward in a “dad trying to be cool” way it’s not funny. I get he’s trying to be quirky here, but it’s a major failure.

4. The collaboration with Ke$sha. Really, do I need to detail why that is a disaster?

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is essentially the problem with this album. It’s a ridiculous bag of mismatching styles that come together under the common ground of the Alice Cooper persona. There are some good tracks here, I definitely like “The Congregation” and “The Last Man on Earth”, but these highlights are mixed with the average to the vomit inducing awful. There is some charm in the character this is delivered, but even charm has its limits.

Information
Released: 2011
Label: Bigger Picture
Website: alicecooper.com
Band
Vincent Furnier: vocals
Fuckloads of guest performers: instruments, backing vocals and shit

Tracklist
01. I Am Made of You
02. Caffeine
03. The Nightmare Returns
04. A Runaway Train
05. Last Man on Earth
06. The Congregation
07. I’ll Bite Your Face Off
08. Disco Bloodbath Boogie Fever
09. Ghouls Gone Wild
10. Something to Remember Me By
11. When Hell Comes Home
12. What Baby Wants
13. I Gotta Get Outta Here
14. The Underture

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