Comments
Umm, How did this get a good review?
It's morbid and disturbing.
Cooper, Alice
Alice Cooper
Along Came A Spider
Please tell me that CSI has worked a marketing deal with Alice for “Along Came a Spider.” Classic rock opening? Check. Serial killer with a fascinating shtick plot? So much so it could usurp “the Miniature Killer” recurring storyline. Theatricality? It’s there in spades. Grissom’s love for bugs? “Spider” – duh. The marketing materials call this disc “a dark and menacing album for dark and menacing times.”Ehh…not so much. To these ears it’s a fun romp through a mish mash of hard rock styles – the place where classic rock, impossible stacks of Marshalls, rock-n-roll, synth-prog, big hooks, and aspiring Hendrix bedroom guitar heroes come together. It sounds good, though, because it was recorded well, and it was recorded today. Listen to guest artist Slash wailing all over second cut “Vengeance is Mine.” Just don’t expect metalcore growls or that breed of songbird that fronted the eighties hair bands. Alice Cooper has never been about the voice (though on several songs it’s apparent who Ratt’s Stephen Pearcy and Whitecross’s Scott Wenzel must have listened to growing up). Alice has always been about the persona, and here he is Spider, a serial killer whose signature evokes that name. Classic synths and creepy string sounds usher in the “Prologue,” in which a female reporter introduces the discovery of a serial killer’s diary, yielding to Alice’s whine, over an insistent snare, detailing his stalking of the listener before kicking into the big chorus of “I Know Where You Live.” “Vengeance Is Mine” is a snarling metal rocker in which Spider makes clear the thing that keeps him going while incarcerated. An oddly propulsive and contagious beat drives the synth rock of “Wake the Dead,” sounding like nothing as much as a concoction you’d hear on a Moby record. The 80s rocker is back with “Catch Me If You Can,” as Spider confesses, “I can’t control myself.” If you ever thought it was creepy for Alan Alda or Phil Donahue to encourage men to “get in touch with your feminine side,” wait ‘til you hear Alice do it on the cut so named. The CD’s ballad, called “Killed by Love” (what else?), is followed by fun 70s rocker, “Hungry,” complete with handclaps as well as the too-campy good-to-be-true lyrics, “Gimme, gimme, gimme, something to eat/something so sweet/something to chew/something soft and tender/ How ‘bout you? I’m hungry!” Spider curiously spares a victim in the hard-rocking “The One that Got Away.” Just when you think Vincent Furnier has permanently abandoned his Sunday School class to channel his inner serial killer, Spider begins to contemplate his eternal destiny to a piano accompaniment before it explodes to the anthemic 70s/80s rock chorus, “Any chance salvation? Any chance for me? Any chance, Salvation? Any chance salvation for eternity? Someone died for me/Someone cared enough to bleed.” In the bridge of this penultimate track Spider marvels, “In my heart, in my soul, there’s something new that’s very old/Like a pain that’s finally gone, I feel my burden lifted.” It’s not until the very last track that the music takes on a truly creepy, don’t play it alone at night vibe, as Spider reveals himself to be the evil that pervades and invades any and all of us – an idea not campy at all, but truly dark. Fading into a theatrical spoken outro to appropriately bookend the disc, only one question remains: am I serious about the TV tie-in mentioned afore? Serious as a million dollars, baby. It’s a match made in … well, if not Heaven, at least a soundstage liberally splattered with stage blood.
Rating: 3
On Halloween, at a youth group lock-in, or in a creepy mood: 4 ½
[SPV] Carey Womack
This album review was originally published in the January/February Issue (#135) of HM Magazine. Order the Print Version to read tons more reviews. You can order the Print Version of this issue online or find this issue on newsstands. You can NOW read this entire feature in the online edition of HM Magazine. If you're a subscriber, you get a free online/digital subscription with your print subscription. You can purchase a single online/digital edition (which includes access to back issues) for only $1.99. A one-year digital-only subscription can be had for only $6.
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