ALICE COOPER: ​WELCOME 2 MY NIGHTMARE BY MATTHEW M. BARTLETT

 
Less than a minute into the first song on Welcome 2 My Nightmare the listener is confronted with…is that…could it be…auto-tune? The notorious crutch for bad singers, and the scourge of modern pop? It was. It is.And it’s great.

I came to Alice Cooper very late compared to most—in my early 40s. I’m 48 now – I grew up on classic rock radio, and of course I heard the hits, School’s Out, I’m Eighteen, Welcome to My Nightmare (sadly, the least frequent). But I was more into the Cars, The Who, Genesis, and Pink Floyd. I paid him little mind. I liked his look. Of course I did. But I never felt any need to follow up, especially after seeing the video for “Poison” in the eighties and assuming the hair-metal crowd had co-opted and watered him down to bland mediocrity (I like the song now)..

I’m not sure what made me pick up a copy of Alice Cooper Goes to Hell a few years back. I think maybe someone had posted a live video on Facebook—something from a music awards show that aired in 1976. In any event, I fell in love with it. In short order I acquired all of his albums through sketchy online machinations, and then guiltily bought the ones I loved best. Welcome 2 My Nightmare came out about a year after I started listening to his stuff. It was technically my first “new” Alice. I hadn’t liked the previous record, so I was wary, but tentatively excited. Especially because Bob Ezrin was producing, and Bob brings out the best in Alice.

Welcome 2 is a decades-later sequel to a Coop classic. The intro is from the earlier albums spooky song “Steven,” which segues into the “I Am Made of You,” a rising, rousing, billowing ballad that builds to a glorious crescendo. It’s a monster of an opener. The aforementioned auto-tune serves to warp Alice’s vocals, to bend them. The effect is creepy and cool.

The second song raises the stakes. "Caffeine", an appropriately frenetic ode to a safer sort of stimulant, is appropriately dramatic and driving and powerful. It’s one to turn up in the car and pump your fist, like some eighties guy in mirrored sunglasses in a Mustang convertible. Given Alice’s infamous difficulties with alcohol, it’s a kick to picture him waking up to a strong steaming coffee instead of a warm Budweiser.

The next short ditty "The Nightmare Returns" could have been something right off of the original record. Horror movie music, creepy and seventies-soaked. That’s followed by “Runaway Train,” an all-verse, no-chorus chugger with great guitar work. Things slow down a bit after that with “Last Man on Earth” which reaches for a Tom Waits vibe and doesn’t quite make it there. It’s catchy, though, and listenable.

"The Congregation", with a very effective spoken-word bit featuring Rob Zombie, is a solid, enjoyable song and "I’ll Bite Your Face Off", the radio track, is a crowd-pleaser, a Stones-esque romp, another one to turn way up in the car. The next two songs are my favorites on the record: the wild pulpy "Disco Bloodbath Boogie Fever" and the silly, surfy "Ghouls Gone Wild" are sugar-filled confections for aficionados of the creepy. This is what I came here for.

The ballad “Something to Remember Me By” floats by emotively, slowing things down again, but it’s just setting you up for the kill, for the song that comes next, "When Hell Comes Home" is a relentless, devastating, gripping song told from the point of view of a kid with a violent alcoholic father. This one’s a powerful, rousing paean to violent revenge. The pace picks up after that with a killer duet with, of all people, Kesha, whose strong vocal presence makes the song. "What Baby Wants" is a playful devil-femme fatale story.

"I Gotta Get Outta Here" revisits the previous songs in a catchy, rousing, fun closer. The denouement is an instrumental overture that musically ties together the old and the new album. Some critics found it to be overselling the connections between the two records, but I kind of liked it.
​
A nightmarish vaudeville show of humor, gore, savagery, and devils—and you can dance to it. This is, for my money, Alice at his late-career best.