The black widow consumes us all up...again!
Now I’ve been a fan of Alice Cooper for over 20 years, however for me his career highlights were in the early & mid 70’s with his groundbreaking, eerie and controversial songs that sat next to great showtunes and big band numbers. His 6 albums from 1971’s ‘Killer’ to 1976’s ‘Goes To Hell’ are his best and whilst there were also 3 good albums before this, and a greatest hits album, and a fantastic live album, Alice was at the top of his game. Any true fan will tell you that whilst Elton John and Andrew Lloyd Webber are good at churning out songs for cartoons and stage shows, back in the day Alice was writing and performing great songs like, ‘Former Lee Warmer’, ‘See Me In The Mirror’ and ‘I Am The Future’ (the latter was penned by Gary Osborne) as well as many more that could appear in a Horror-Rock-Opera.
Alice Cooper though, has always been able to experiment and re-invent himself. In the early 80’s he dabbled with Electro Rock in his album ‘Special Forces’, before he hit it big again with the big ‘80’s Hard Rock sound that saw ‘Constrictor’, ‘Raise Your Fist…’ and the highly commercial releases of ‘Trash’ and ‘Hey Stoopid’ co-written with hit-king Desmond Child (who was also behind the co-writing duties of the likes of Bon Jovi and Aerosmith), before Alice fell from the mainstream to the cult celebrity golf figure that he is today. Of his recent album albums, ‘The Eyes Of Alice Cooper’ in 2003 was a decent Garage Rock album, so what of ‘Along Came The Spider’…?
True to tradition, the original concept artist Mr Cooper has a concept for this album which is a serial killer called Spider, and also sees Alice revert his eye make up to his original spider design as homage. On the opening song we have a short prologue, which as you would expect is eerie, with a woman’s voice telling how they found the diary of Spider detailing his killings - It’s not quite as theatrical and fabulous as Vincent Price on the prequel to ‘Black Widow’, but it’s good enough. This leads into the full throttle rock of, ‘I Know Where You Live’, including the lines, “I see, I feel, I watch over you…”sung in Alice’s voice that I prefer, and whilst his rock-sneer is his trade mark, it’s a shame that his latter albums have all had this, as dare I say it, but Alice Cooper actually has a very good singing voice when he doesn’t sneer…
With the inclusion of Slash adding some extra riffs on, ‘Vengeance Is Mine’ this is a good crisp Hard Rock song, with big beats and chunky riffs, and would sit nicely on one of Alice’s ‘80’s albums. ‘Wake The Dead’ has an Industrial/Hard Rock feel and it’s easy to see the comparisons between The Coop and Mr Manson, with deep riffs, and Electrical sounding beats, whilst the song speaks of not caring whether our ‘hero’ attacks blondes, brunettes or Ginger haired lasses, “Run for your life // You better run for your life” he shouts! Then he taunts, “Catch me, catch me if you can!” in the song of the same name that follows on in the same musical vein.
‘(In Touch with) Your Feminine Side’ is a monster of a song mixing the Rock’n’Roll ethos with double dose of Sleaze Rock. There are some great drum beats, and some sexy guitar riffs I this song that is one of the most catchy songs since ‘Hey Stoopid’. ‘Wrapped In Silk’ could have been on 1970’s ‘Easy Action’ or 1971’s ‘Love it To Death’ with it’s Detroit Rock stomp. There are a couple of slow ballads here on ‘Along Came A Spider’, and it’s always surprising at how good Alice is at these. The first one is, ‘Killed By Love’ which is a little like ‘Stolen Prayer’ from 1994’s, ‘The Last Temptation’, but could’ve been recorded anytime from the late ‘80’s, but it’s worth noting that there is no cheese here, which arguably can’t be said for the ballad’s on both ‘Trash’ and ‘Hey Stoopid’ that spawned a handful of Rock-Ballads-By-Numbers. The second ballad here is the great song, ‘Salvation’ which is the best one harking back to classic Coop ballads from the ‘70’s and is a cross between ‘How You Gonna See Me Now’ and ‘I Never Cry’. I almost shed a nostalgic tear…
The addition of sleaze that’s injected into some of the faster songs are what makes this album more successful than Alice’s more recent studio albums, and a fine example is in ‘I’m Hungry’ that has guitars that are a cross between sleaze and ‘70’s Glam and dual vocals. Then the ballsy Rock attack of ‘The One That Got Away’ fires at you on all cylinders, right from the opening lines of, “You look like you could fit in the trunk of my car…” then the last song, ‘I Am The Spider’ which again shows Alice as he shrugs off any accusations of him getting mellow with age with riffs that would make Slayer proud, then in true form the song fades and Alice’s eerie voice comes in bringing back the schizophrenic character Steven from his, ‘Welcome To My Nightmare’ album (my personal favourite). A wonderful end!
‘Along Came A Spider’ isn’t as commercial as ‘Trash’ or ‘Hey Stoopid’ but then Alice would have to change himself completely to do that, and let’s face it, Alice with a EMO haircut would ironically be a nightmare that I’m not prepared to have. This album is as good as anything that Alice did in the 1980’s, and therefore it’s a success. No, if you are not a fan of The Coop, then there is nothing here that might bring you around to his way of thinking, however like Billy Idol recently we have an old pro that has a musically strong, and hard rocking album, and whether it’s something that you will play a handful of times or forever, as a music fan you have a duty to listen to someone who has brought a lot more to the music world than, ‘Poison’, ‘Hey Stoopid’ and ‘Schools Out’, he wrote the ballad ‘Only Women Bleed’ coveed by the likes of Dolly Parton no less, recorded with The Beatles and The Bee Gees, and even had Old Blue Eyes cover one of his songs…Enough said, all bow down to The Coop!