Album Review: Alice Cooper - Welcome 2 My Nightmare

Alice Cooper - Welcome 2 My Nightmare

UMe - 2011

7/10

If Goes To Hell is the Halloween II (1981) of Welcome To My Nightmare, then Welcome 2 My Nightmare is the Halloween (2018) sequel. Confused yet? So are we all. Starting a new decade, Alice swung in with a follow up to the 1975 classic over 30 years later. Musically it’s not similar in any way, and this is easily the closest the shock rocker has come to making a full on modern pop album. Even the autotune is in full display from the start. It may be safe to say that that was used more for effect than pitch correction though. 

But I’m not exaggerating when I say this, opener “I Am Made Of You” Sounds like it could fit on an Imagine Dragons album. Yet, I don’t think it’s bad. The “Steven” throwback piano rhythm, the slow buildup, and the ending solo do make for a rather intriguing entrance to our next adventure. It fits too, because this is pretty much how the whole record goes; catchy pop songs with a slightly ghoulish twist to fit Alice’s narrative, and it surprisingly works really well. Disco tunage even works in again with “Disco Bloodbath Boogie Fever,” ending with a swift heavy shift in delivery.

So it should be no surprise that Welcome 2 My Nightmare is chock full of chorus-heavy numbers, catchy lyrics, and easy to ingest songs in the form of hits. The nightmare themes aside, this creates a fairly strong sense of consistency that we haven’t had since Brutal Planet. “Ghouls Gone Wild” is like a Scooby Doo montage tune that would work as a party anthem, and you even get Ke$ha as a guest on “What Baby Wants”. Never does pop music use the horror element to its advantage the way it does here. Most of the identifying tropes are sidestepped on “Caffeine,” but even that one works as a more energetic radio pop tune.

I’m sure this reads like a massive sellout, and things are admittedly pretty goofy, but I’m just thrilled to have something interesting and mostly catchy. There’s plenty of Cooperisms that fall outside of the regular pop schtick, lyrics even aside. “Last Man On Earth” is so much fun, using his older age to its advantage and injecting broadway musical feels. Even “The Congregation” has some Beatles meets Ghost feels, which I can appreciate.

Callbacks to the original classic, a handful of guest stars, pop music tropes, and a dash of originality make this an album absolutely worth hearing. It’s a step up from what was originally looked at as the sequel. Much of this description may sound off putting to die hard classic fans or metalheads, and things probably could have been trimmed a bit, but I urge everyone to give it a try.