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| Artist: Alice Cooper
Label: RSK
Category: Music
List Price: £15.99
Buy New: £6.96
You Save: £9.03 (56%)
New (45) Used (8) from £4.99
Rating:  19 reviews
Sales Rank: 1208
Media: Audio CD
Discs: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 5.4 x 5 x 0.4
MPN: 90602
UPC: 693723906027
EAN: 0693723906027
ASIN: B001ASVAM8
Release Date: July 28, 2008
Shipping: Eligible for Super Saver Shipping
Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours
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| Customer Reviews:
Mixing Alice's highs of '70's with his early '80's rock! September 5, 2008
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
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!
 Middle of the road. August 25, 2008
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
I've been a big fan of Alice since the 70's, I know he is trying to return to the 'Nightmare' era here, a concept album centered around a murdered called Spider.
Somehow the album get disjointed, some of the music is poor yet other tracks are top notch, I think in time it will grow on me though.
I hope he does another tour, Ive seen him many times and always enjoyed his live show, but I hope he don't tour playing the whole of this album (like Iron Maiden with A Matter Of Life And Death), I don't think it will work as people want the Cooper classics live.
A WASTED OPPORTUNITY. August 8, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Let's get one thing straight, I LOVE ALICE COOPER!!!, right now we've that out of the way I'll continue.
I am very disappointed with this release,and I'll cut to the chase. All this is,is a very good rock n roll album, thinly disguised as a concept, Alice is capaple of so much more than this! The packaging is very nice with some great pic's of Alice, and there's an interesting intro'& outro, but beyond that it's just a rock n roll record.
I was hoping for a bit of imagination, especially with the Steven references but it was a wasted oppertunity in my opinion.
Alice has loads of imagination as he's proved over and over again, but none of it is showing here, no dark passages of music, nothing linking the songs, nowhere near the imagination he showed on WELCOME TO MY NIGHTMARE. Like I said, I DO love Alice's music and this is another Eyes of Alice/Dirty Diamonds type record, nothing wrong with that, but he's capable of so much more.
'Rather A Muddled Collection Of Ideas' August 5, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Don't get me wrong concerning this review, That Alice Cooper is STILL producing music of this quality at his age is certainly a tribute to him. This said, there are a number of problems with 'Along Came A Spider'. My main beef with the album is that for a concept album about a serial killer a lot of the songs on the album are just 'too nice'. Take the lone ballad 'Killed By Love' for example. Classic Alice would have seen the man come up with something extremely sinister sounding ('Welcome To My Nightmare') or quite possibly uncomfortable to listen to ('I Love The Dead' for example) given appropriate material. 'Killed By Love' however, has pop sensibilities underlaying it and Alice seems to have kept his creative urges in check in order to ensure a commercial edge to the song. This problem repeats itself throughout this record and you cannot help feeling that things could have been so much better if Alice had just allowed himself to submerge more deeply into the character of his killer. There are also a LOT of different styles of music on this album and , while this goes a long way to advertise Coopers diversity, it does nothing for the cohesion of the album and therefore 'Along Comes A Spider' comes accross as rather a 'patchwork quilt' of musical ideas. Still, this is not the worst Alice Cooper album you will hear and with repeated listens it could be a grower, but for me it's too much 'Mr Nice Guy'. Your Call.
Honest Review. August 3, 2008
5 out of 7 found this review helpful
90% of reviews on amazon are written by fans trying to promote their favourite artist with effusive praise. But here's a level-headed review.
My qualifications: I've been a big Alice Fan since the early 70s. I'm old in other words.
This CD is good. But no it is not up there with his great 70s work. In those days Alice turned out perhaps 7 or 8 awesome albums worthy of 5 stars. This is worth four. It's solid, it's worth buying, but no it's not his best work. Since 1980 Alice has produced a few four star albums: Last Temptation, Brutal Planet, Dragontown, Eyes, Stoopid, Trash. This fits right into your collection beside those. But don't compare it to From the inside, Billion Dollar Babies or Welcome to my Nighmare. Because it's not THAT good.
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