Album Reviews : Alice Cooper – Along Came A Spider

Along Came a Spider is Alice Cooper’s 25th studio album and sees him diverting back to his old school rock n’ roll roots. The album is a concept based on a psychopath serial killer named Spider, who terrorizes young women for the sole purpose of taking their legs after killing them to essentially make a spider of his own. Yet complications arise when his plans come to an abrupt halt when he falls in love with his eighth victim.

The style of the album is very familiar with his first generation of material, very straight forward rock n’ roll with hints of melodic moments. The album showcases alot of past genres within the foundation of the album, if you listen closely you can hear the reminiscent styling of psychedelic rock, blues and the familiar sounds of ‘The Beatles’. The album flows quite nicely with the story unfolding throughout each song. The listener may not find a sense of depth within the story, yet its easy to follow and gives the listener a taste of Alice Coopers dark, twisted and nightmarish tales which he tells every so elegantly through his board range of confrontational music.

Even though the album has a very dark and foreboding feel to it, it still carries a great catchy rock beat with some uplifting moments which are very similar to his past hits like, “Poison” and “School’s Out”. I personally found this to be one of the better albums done by a long time musicians in the metal world today.

Many people were disappointed with the recent work of Ozzy Osbourne on his latest album, “Black Rain”, but many will be pleasantly surprised with the quality of Alice Cooper’s new album. This is mainly due to Cooper not leaving his comfort zone to often and keeps the album, in a sense very simple . It may be simple to some, yet packs quite a punch and is worthy of afew spins on anyone’s CD player.

Funny enough, Ozzy Osbourne makes an appearance on the album, on the track “Wake The Dead”. *insert bad joke here!*
I could only hear Cooper’s vocals as he seemed to be the dominate singer in the song, yet having their vocals combined added a great contrast to the song and worked quite well. The song is quite funky and has a sound very familiar to Cooper’s past hit, “Billion Dollar Baby’s”.

Another contribution to the album is “Slash” of Guns N’ Rose and Velvet Revolver fame. On the song, “Vengeance Is Mine”. The song has a very reinforced bluesy sound and packs quite a punch with its intricate laying of solos. I found it to be a great chill out song and adds a great contrast to the albums dark theme.

As I mentioned before I was quite surprised with this album, I was expecting nothing more then another mediocre album done by a musician long since forgotten in the music industry to many, yet was quite blown away with the all round quality of the album. If you’ve been a fan of Cooper since his early years, you’ll easily find a place for this album in your music collection. Its a great rock and roll album and is a must have for any fan of the godfather of shock rock music.

If you were expecting a lavish concept album however, with a vague similarity to his work on the recent Avantasia album, your best to look elsewhere. This album is purely a straight forward rock and roll album, but having said that it still has a great handful of songs and memorable moments which will keep any Alice Cooper fan happy. 7.5/10

Band: Alice Cooper
Album: Along Came A Spider
Year: 2008
Genre: Shock Rock, Classic Rock, Hard Rock
Label: SPV
Origin: America
http://www.myspace.com/officialalicecooper

Track listing:
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