The Coop's 25th album! (Along Came A Spider - Alice Cooper)

Member Name: dangaroo

Product:	Along Came A Spider - Alice Cooper
Date:	23/10/08 (87 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Still rocking, some good lyrics

Disadvantages: A bit cheesy at times and some of the tracks are a bit poppy

Along Came A Spider is Alice Cooper's 25th studio album, released some 39 years after his first album "Pretties for You", I'm a big Alice Cooper fan and have every one of his albums and the fact that he experiments with different sounds occasionally means that they're not that good or are completely different to what you expect but most of them grown on you within time.

So far this millenium has been a bit of a mixed bags - whilst I thought it started off strong with the harder sounding Brutal Planet and Dragontown, The Eyes of Alice Cooper was hit and miss and had one or two stinkers but also some good tracks as he aimed for a garagey sound, Dirty Diamonds on the other hand was a bit of a let down with a poppy sound and no stand out tracks. Along Came A Spider was not only well-received by critics but also seemingly the public, giving Alice his best chart positions in the UK and US since 1991's Hey Stoopid, an album which produced a fair amount of well known songs - Hey Stoopid, Feed my Frankenstein and Love's A Loaded Gun to name but a few.

At first listen, I thought "oh no" when listening to this album, it's a continuation of Dirty Diamonds but on second listening, I started to warm to it.. there are some cheesy lyrics (particularly on "(In Touch With Your) Feminine Side" in there and the last track I am The Spider has good and bad but is basically a return of the Stephen story from the 80s! Guitar riffs are catchy and whilst a couple of tracks may have quite a popy sound, there's also some classics - "Killed by Love" is possibly the best ballad he's done since "Only Women Bleed" and it's interesting to see that the vocals haven't changed since the very early work in the late 60s, early 70s! I Know Where You Live is a great powerful way to start off the album and in true Coop style starts a story which sets the theme of the album. This basically revolves around a serial killer by the name of Spider who baffles the police by removing a leg off each of his victims, he plans to acquire 8 legs to build his very own spider but he falls in love with the 8th victim which complicates things somewhat.

This may not be his best album but it's not a let down either and I think you'll find it grows on you.

Personnel used on this album (courtesy of Wikipedia)

* Alice Cooper - Lead/Backing Vocals
* Danny Saber - Guitars (Tracks 1,2,3,5,6,7,8,10 and 11); Slide Guitars (4); Ebow (4); Bass Guitars (1,3,6,8,10 and 11); Piano (7); Keyboards (1,3,6,7,8,10 and 11); Synths (4); String Arrangements (10 and 11)
* Greg Hampton - Guitars (2,4,6,8,9 and 11); Bass Guitars (4); Keyboards (4,9 and 11); Backing Vocals (1,2,3,4,6,8 and 11); String Arrangements (2 and 11)
* Keri Kelli - Guitars (5,7 and 9)
* Jason Hook - Guitars (5)
* Slash - Lead Guitar (2)
* Whitey Kirst - Guitars (8)
* Chuck Garric - Bass Guitars (2,7 and 9); Backing Vocals (2)
* Eric Singer - Drums (1,2,4,5,6,7,9 and 11)
* David Piribauer - Drums (8 and 10)
* Steffen Presley - B3 Organ (6)
* Ozzy Osbourne - Harmonica (3) (Uncredited)
* Bernard Fowler - Backing Vocals (1,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10 and 11)
* Calico Cooper - Backing Vocals (5); Spoken Word (9)

Tracklist

1. "Prologue / I Know Where You Live" (Cooper, Saber, Hampton)- 4:21
2. "Vengeance Is Mine" (Featuring Slash) (Cooper, Saber, Hampton) - 4:26
3. "Wake The Dead" (Featuring Ozzy Osbourne) (Cooper, Osbourne, Saber) - 3:53
4. "Catch Me If You Can" (Cooper, Saber, Hampton) - 3:15
5. "(In Touch With) Your Feminine Side" (Cooper, Garric, Johnson, Kelli) - 3:16
6. "Wrapped In Silk" (Cooper, Saber, Hampton) - 4:17
7. "Killed By Love" (Cooper, Garric, Bacchi, Kelli) - 3:34
8. "I'm Hungry" (Cooper, Saber, Hampton) - 3:58
9. "The One That Got Away" (Cooper, Kelli, Lane) - 3:21
10. "Salvation" (Cooper, Saber, Hampton, Fowler) - 4:36
11. "I Am The Spider / Epilogue" (Cooper, Saber, Hampton) - 5:21

Here's the trailer for the album!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VK8QZrJTpoY

Summary: You Trap, You Kill, You Eat - That's What A good Spider does!