Alice Cooper-Welcome 2 My Nightmare

Universal Music Enterprises
2011

It was 35 years ago years ago that Alice Cooper decided to part ways with his longtime band and go it alone. After teaming up with producer Bob Ezrin the pair crafted one of hard rocks most legendary albums. Welcome To My Nightmare was much more than just a concept album. It was a statement that Alice Cooper had arrived and the world would never be the same. Now all these years later Alice has teamed up once again with producer Bob Ezrin to craft a sequel to Welcome to My Nightmare. Having recruited previous members of the Alice Cooper Band (Dennis Dunaway, Neal Smith and Michael Bruce) he also went out of his way to enlist a who's who a musicians including Steve Hunter, Dick Wagner, Tommy Denander, Vince Gill, Rob Zombie, John 5, Chuck Garric, Ke$ha, Piggy D, Kip Winger, Jimmy DeGrasso and many more. Add to that enlisting outside artists to co-write some songs (Singer Songwriter Tommy Henriksen, Buckcherry member Keith Nelson, songwriter Desmond Child, Dick Wagner, Chuck Garric, film composer Jeremy Rubolino and Ke$ha) and you get the sense that Alice wanted to go all out for this one. So, the million dollar question is does it all work? For the most part yes. Alice Cooper knows full well how to craft songs that are well written and will stick in your head for hours after hearing them. On Welcome 2 My Nightmare the music covers just about every genre of music from driving hard rock (the early single "I'll Bite Your Face Off") to soul seeking ballads ("When Hell Comes Home") to the simply odd ("Disco Bloodbath Boogie Fever") and just about everything in between. As a follow-up to Welcome to My Nightmare it has huge shoes to fill. I'm not sure you could say it's as good as it's predecessor but it is a fine album. "Caffeine" is a good mid-paced rocker and "A Runaway Train" has some good boogie going for it. It remains to be seen how people feel about the wide amount of diversity on the album. For those who enjoy many different shades of music though the album really does have something for everyone. The perfect example is the track "I Gotta Get Outta Here" which is part pop and part classic rock with a hair of country rock. Only Alice could pull it off so well. By the time "The Underture" wraps up the album you do have the feeling that you've been part of an interesting experiment in rock music 101 with professor Alice. All in all Welcome 2 My Nightmare is an solid album with moments where it borders on epic. You have rock, pop and sweeping musical numbers. In other words it is a look inside the twisted mind of Alice Cooper and in a very true sense a real album.