Along Came A Spider Alice Cooper Released – 2008 by SPV/Steelhammer Track List 1. Prologue/I Know Where You Live 2. Vengeance Is Mine 3. Wake The Dead 4. Catch Me If You Can 5. (In Touch With) Your Feminine Side 6. Wrapped In Silk 7. Killed By Love 8. I’m Hungry 9. The One That Got Away 10. Salvation 11. I Am The Spider/Epilogue

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Int. AA (Aliceaholics Anonymous) meeting

“Hello.  My name is Vini Vägn.  And I’m an Aliceaholic.”

That’s right my fellow rockers.  Alice Cooper is my main man and I’ll proudly wear that badge for the rest of my dying days.  For it twas this man, this tall, skinny, snarling, filthy drunk rock star that allows me to be here today, writing this little review.

The year was 1989, I was young and mulletful. Whilst innocently playing with my “Ultimate Warrior” WWF Wrestling figurine, a mate of mine asked me, “Dude, have you heard the new song Poison by Alice Cooper?”  Alice Cooper, why would my mate, Skinny Guts, be crapping onto me about some chick singer? We’re wrestling fans man; we don’t listen to girly music! But I checked it out anyway and thank God I did! I didn’t just find the coolest looking dude on Rage, I found the coolest sing-a-long guitar driven song of 1989 (and dude, there ended up being some cool sing-a-long guitar driven songs in 1989!).

SMACK!!!  The doors to rock and roll suddenly had opened for me!  Skid Row, Poison, Motley Crue and Aerosmith all unfolded right in front of me from that moment onwards, and Alice remained at the forefront – always! And I went from schoolyard king of wrestling to schoolyard king of ROCK!!!

So it’s with this menacing addiction (that and booze!!) that I wait with anticipation of each and every new Alice album.  I have no choice. Back in the early days, I had his whole repertoire to explore, hunting down the Alice section in every record store I passed hoping to find another album to get my grubby stink-finger hands on. It was an exciting time. Now I must wait patiently. But thank Christ he’s been pumping them out in quick succession recently! Hell remember the wait between 1994 and 2000???

So this year, this glorious year where rock albums have been so awesomely plentiful, along came Alice with ‘Along Came a Spider’ (and along I came!). But not at first…

As I’ve read in several reviews of ‘Spider’, it also took me a few listens to really appreciate just how good this album is. This is kinda a new thing for me, normally I throw a new Alice album on and I’m in love with it straight away. On first listen with ‘Spider’ however, I wasn’t quite sure what to think. I couldn’t say it was rubbish, but I couldn’t say I fully loved it either.  I couldn’t help think back to ‘Dragontown’… I kinda had the feeling that some of the songs may have sounded forced, which is what I think came out of ‘Dragontown’ (as good as that album is). So I listened to it again and again and again (like I wasn’t going to anyway!).

I will say this now; ‘Along Came A Spider’ is Alice Cooper’s best work since ‘Hey Stoopid’.  Better than ‘The Last Temptation’, better than ‘Brutal Planet’ and better than ‘Dirty Diamonds’. Without doubt! This album rocks with a drunk 70’s swagger! It’s sleazy, it’s catchy and it rocks your balls off! From the opening Rob Zombie-ish ‘Prologue’ you know you’re in for something different. As soon as the first chords of ‘I Know Where You Live’ kick in, the bouncing pace of the drum and the heavy “horn” synths, you know this song rocks – old school!  This is ‘Wish I was Born in Beverley Hills’ for 2008. Alice’s voice kicks arse, his sneering snarl as wicked as ever - “I don’t like the guy in the suit or that street punk in the combat boots”. This is catchy glam 70’s rock at it’s best. You can’t help sing along with this song – and it’s mental, cos you’re singing about a dude who goes into a chicks bedroom while she’s sleeping and smells her hair!!!  Fucking sick!

And the rest of the album rolls on like this…’Catch Me If You Can’, ‘(In touch with your) Feminine Side’, ‘I’m Hungry’, ‘The One That Got Away’…. These are all classic 70’s glam-esque sing-along poppy hard rock numbers. Some of the best, catchy lyrics Alice has written in a long time. Each song is as screwed up as the next one, lyrically, but just as you would have found yourself doing with songs like ‘Caught In A Dream’, ‘I’m Eighteen’, ‘Long Way To Go’ and ‘Is It My Body’ off ‘Love it to Death’, you can’t help sing-along with this psychopathic killer – It’s great!  ‘(In touch with your) Feminine Side’ in particular has such a sexy, glittery upbeat feel to it with killer fret action but dude, this song ain’t no friggin upbeat Slade number. This is Alice Cooper man, and he’s singing about hunting down some bird who’s running away from him cos he wants to get down and dirty rape style, before slashing her up!!!!  Gotta love the King of Ghoul!

I’ve left two other catchy glitter numbers out on purpose from the list above cos these two tracks stand out (which is hard cos this album kicks arse) on their own and deserve a special mention. ‘Wake The Dead’ and ‘Wrapped in Silk’.  The first being very different from Alice but at the same time feeling strangely familiar. Whether it’s because of the “supposedly” blatant rip off of the bass line of some Beastie Boys song, I wouldn’t know, but as one critic put it, this is the hit off the album. And I can sympathise. Each time I listen to it I can just imagine Triple J getting hold of it and playing it to their uni/college twat listeners! This could’ve been the next number 1 Triple J Top 100 but of course they’re not gonna give it a chance – too busy wound up over some gay-ass bands called Van She or Vampire Weekend or some other college faggot band shit!

And ‘Wrapped in Silk’, the gem off the album. This is one of the best songs ‘ol Snake Eyes has written in donks (and this is in amongst ‘Brutal Planet’, ‘Perfect’ and ‘Goodbye Baby’).  From the opening riff, to the Beatle-esque “my my my my my” and into the pounding base-driven “Yes Tonight!” The guitar riff in this song is awesome and I’ve never quite heard an Alice song structured in this way before, it really does venture from Alice’s standard verse, chorus, verse, chorus format into an almost verse, chorus, chorus, verse, chorus, chorus, verse, verse – ahhhh you get the drift, it fuckin rocks!!! And his voice in this song has to get a special mention. Same with Ozzy on his last album, I don’t know if there’s a new way of recording lyrics or if it’s the programmes artists are now using, but Alice hasn’t sounded this good in ages!  It’s like multilayered Alice – fuckin boner!

Of course ‘Spider’ ain’t without it’s obligatory ballads – ‘Killed By Love’ and ‘Salvation’.  ‘Salvation’ has taken a bad wrap in some parts, with people likening it to Alice’s spiritual following, but I actually quite like the tune and think it’s right up there with some of his best ballads like ‘I Never Cry’. It’s got that old school fel to it like the rest of the album and lyrically it reminds me of Queen’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ – in fact I’d have loved to have seen it go off on some trippy vocal experience like that song – but wishing’s for fools. 

‘Killed By Love’ vocally sounds like ‘You and Me’, so it’s cool cos I get to picture mine and Rikki Stone’s favourite period Alice – drunken-mess ‘Lace and Whiskey’ Alice!!!!  It’s a cool song and recorded very well – kinda ends a bit crap though so leaves you thinking it’s a bit like a number off of a bad musical soundtrack. The background vocals are sick too in this song; it’s this Bernard Fowler bloke who’s supposedly sung with the Stones.  He sounds like he should be in the fuckin Bee Gees not the Stones! 

Ok, my gripes I hear you ask?  Well I honestly ain’t got much, but as big an Alice fan as I am; I know when things could be better. For starters, I think this album could have been louder. Vocal-wise, Alice is right up front, which is cool. But the guitars suffer in parts because of this. Also with Alice pumping it as a “real Alice album” that “real Alice fans will love”, and it is all this and more, I’d have liked to see it go a little bit more psycho. I guess I was anticipating a bit of a “Steven/The Awakenings” kinda vibe somewhere in there. I know he did it on ‘This House is Haunted’ off of 2003’s ‘The Eyes’ but it would have been cool to rear it’s head again – or even, given the kinda split personality shit that pops up at the end, he could have done a new ‘Ballad of Dwight Fry’ for 2008. And my final gripe, and it’s been a long-standing one, is the fact that I don’t think Alice allows to explore his songs musically enough anymore. I miss the 5/6minute (even 8mins, remember ‘Halo of Flies’?) numbers he used to do. I know that Alice really is more known for his signature 3-4minute, fits on the radio hits but sometimes I just think he’s selling himself (and his players) a wee bit short.  Kerri Kelly is an excellent guitarist (as was Roxxie), let the fuckers shred dude!

Ok, so I’ve pretty much done the album to death. Enough of the negative shit, I’m seriously just knit-picking. This album is a fucking beauty and stands up on it’s own as a true Alice classic. It’s catchy, it’s twisted, it rocks and it pouts with glam. True Alice style. I leave you with a heavier note…. ‘Vengeance Is Mine’ – what a fucking song!  Slash wah-wahing it the whole way through! Again, this song has been ridiculed in some parts of the music world for being too ‘80’s metal – but fuck me! What do these fuckers want – ‘80’s fucking metal was the best fucking metal. And if Alice wants to do it again in 2008, then he has my fucking blessing!

Int.  AA (Alcoholics Anonymous) meeting

“Cheers to this evening!  And cheers to Alice Cooper”

Visit: www.alicecooper.com – www.myspace.com/officialalicecooper

DirtyRock.net review by ‘Vini Vagn’ 2008

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