There\u2019s something to be said for first impressions, and I must confess, rarely do I have a first reaction to an album as negatively as this one.\u00a0 The album\u2019s low points are so glaring and distracting that they completely overshadowed my initial reaction to this album, and I was ready to write it off as the worst thing that Alice has done in a long time.\u00a0 However, my first impressions were somewhat misguided and this album does have just enough good material to recommend it.<\/p>\n
So, a little background: In case you couldn\u2019t figure it out by its (ridiculous) title, this album is the official sequel to Cooper\u2019s classic concept album Welcome To My Nightmare<\/i>. It marks the long awaited return of famed producer and collaborator Bob Ezrin to Cooper\u2019s music. I say \u201cofficial sequel\u201d because Cooper\u2019s conceptual follow-up Goes To Hell<\/i> (released in \u201876) felt like a sequel in spirit, taking aspects of the first and expanding and changing them with a different theme but similar style, whereas Welcome 2\u2019s<\/i> sequel qualities feel pretty forced. The majority of the tracks have nothing to do with the concept, and the handful that do go way overboard on call-backs to the original (which generally utilize the recurring \u201cSteven\u201d theme). Similar to Cooper\u2019s reunion with Ezrin, the surviving members of the original Alice Cooper band (Dennis Dunaway, Neal Smith and Michael Bruce), as well as his late \u201870s guitarist Dick Wagner, have returned to collaborate on several of these songs. They do a fine job and boost the \u201870s rock vibe that many of these tracks go for. After all these years, they feel somewhat more faceless than they used to, but no matter, their presence is still very much welcome. <\/p>\n
Unfortunately, this album is almost ruined by a handful of absolutely abysmal tracks. \u201cWhat Baby Wants\u201d features none other than modern pop anti-sensation Ke$ha. To say that this song is bad is a major understatement. If by some miracle of nature her voice and public persona don\u2019t make you want to kill yourself, the lyrics she sings surely will. Cooper and Ezrin add in a whole bunch of modern touches in the production such as an ugly auto-tuned bridge, and they just make the track more obnoxious than it already was. I can virtually guarantee that Ke$ha and Cooper\u2019s fanbases do not overlap; nobody interested in Alice Cooper will like Ke$ha\u2019s parts and nobody who likes Ke$ha would have ever bought this album in the first place. So why does it even exist at all? <\/p>\n
The other lowlight, \u201cDisco Bloodbath Boogie Fever,\u201d is almost worse. Partly a disco parody and partly a take on modern \u201cclub\u201d music, it annoys on almost every front. The second Alice begins to sing-speak (I hesitate to say \u201crap\u201d) the verses \u201cHere you are \/ In the club \/ With your bottle \/ Full of Bud \/ You’ve got grill \/ You got bling \/ But player you don’t know a thing,\u201d I reflexively reach for the skip button. It\u2019s utterly loathsome and fails both as a parody and as a song. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe Nightmare Returns\u201d seems to be a direct rip on \u201cYears Ago,\u201d but it\u2019s only a minute long and it\u2019s not awful, so it can stick around. \u201cThe Underture\u201d haphazardly slaps instrumental themes from this album and the original together, handily demonstrating how much melodically weaker the new melodies are from the old ones. It feels much more like an overture-type album opener than a reprise-based closer, and it ends the album on an underwhelming note in spite of its grandiosity. However, taken on its own, it\u2019s still a fun medley. <\/p>\n
Thankfully, most of the rest of the album is actually fairly good. \u201cCaffeine,\u201d \u201cA Runaway Train,\u201d and \u201cThe Congregation\u201d are great rockers, featuring that \u201870s vibe that Cooper is so good at delivering. \u201cGhouls Gone Wild\u201d and \u201cLast Man On Earth\u201d add some positive diversity to the album, being Coop\u2019s take on surf rock and show-tunes respectively. Both work great and are among the best tracks on the album. \u201cSomething To Remember Me By\u201d is as solid a ballad as any he\u2019s done. Most of the other tracks don\u2019t do much in the way of memorability and reek of Cooper-by-numbers, but they\u2019re enjoyable while they\u2019re on so I can\u2019t fault them too much. Even \u201cI Am Made Of You\u201d which begins as an auto-tuned nightmare turns out to be a decent song if you can just get past that embarrassing sound effect.<\/p>\n
Welcome 2 My Nightmare<\/i> is a maddeningly inconsistent album. Its diversity works both for and against it. Most people will find something to both really like and really hate among these tracks. As a sequel it utterly fails, but as an inclusion into Cooper\u2019s late output, it does a fair job. Just keep away from those dance songs at all costs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":30757,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[5676],"rating":[5614],"class_list":["post-42431","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-alice-cooper","rating-rating-c-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/42431","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42431"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/42431\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30757"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=42431"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=42431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}