Welcome 2 My Nightmare

Any more nightmares from dad of our music fears?

Well, it might look too cruel to point a finger at a moderately-built sixty-year old man with a hook nose and put the whole blame on him; but we don’t seem to have any other choice. This man’s name is Alice Cooper and this is because of him that we have on the rock stage such monsters as Slipknot, Marylin Manson, or Cradle Of Filth. All these darlings loved so dearly by fans of horrors, gothic and heavy music grew up in the evil and unholy kindergarten run then and now by this very Alice Cooper. The wicked mentor and master of bad deeds has grown remarkably older, but has not intention to retire. Quite the opposite, Alice has recently missed the good old days and recorded a CD with a too familiar title, Welcome 2 My Nightmare. Cooper’s loyal fans knew it right then, what the rocker meant. In 1975, Alice already issued a record named like that. Welcome To My Nightmare was his first solo album and turned out to be one of his most successful efforts ever. It is quite natural that Cooper did not go farther than offering a similar title for he has been playing a different kind of music for quite a long while now and must know that there’s no chance to bring the past back.

Can’t mistake the album for Cooper’s classic record

To make this album, Cooper teamed up one more time with his old buddy, producer Bo Ezrin who guided the release of the singer’s most influential records. Moreover, the rocker managed to gather almost everyone from the original Alice Cooper band. It all looks meaningless now that we know that the music of the new record is far from what these cool guys made back in the seventies. Alice exposed that reputed confidence of his by opening Welcome 2 My Nightmare with half-lulling, half-emo-rockish I Am Made Of You, apparently, for the listeners to put aside their hopes to get a substantial sequel to the legendary album. The second track, Caffeine, seems to help the musician recollect how to play the classic stuff, but not for long. And that’s the right thing to do! After all, who’d fall for the same tricks that ruled the ball in 1975? Alice Cooper has turned into a showman long ago and now he is making nothing but cool music as he drifts freely across the genres. However, he has never sailed that far before. What do you think about What Baby Wants where the Great and terrible sang with… Kesha! Well, it sounds better than what you might expect. We also have country-like A Runaway Train, electronic-danceable Disco Bloodbath Boogie Fever, and rock-and-rollish I’ll Bite Your Face Off with a little blues. Briefly speaking, Cooper is just hanging out.

A compromise with time

Somewhere in the middle of Welcome 2 My Nightmare, maybe, while listening to a splendid and simple, like it’s always been with Cooper, ballad Something To Remember Me By, you understand that in the Alice Cooper kitchen there’s nothing you can’t eat. And the reason is this man puts his heart into everything he does. He lives the music he makes and this is why he united it with theater to merge with the characters depicted in his songs. His new album is one big attraction, an amusement park with a surprise round every corner. Right, Cooper prefers to surprise today rather than to kick up a row. The straightforwardness of his old albums gave way to the flexibility of his new records, with Alice’s music offering more than you can imagine. He is not going to shock or scare anybody anymore: the age takes its toll and there are many of his followers to whom this might be more interesting. It would have been a bad mistake to make Welcome 2 My Nightmare an exact music continuation to the famous record of 1975. That album was destined to be one and only forevermore. Alice Cooper’s new work is destined to be one more fine record in the huge discography of the great rebel from the realm of rock music.