Review: Alice Cooper – Raise the Dead, Live at Wacken

The sadistic madman Alice Cooper returns to the world of rock with ‘Raise the Dead’ a dual album recorded from his set at Wacken Festival. The first disc opens to ‘Hello Hooray‘ followed by ‘House of Fire’ before charging into four of Alice’s classic songs ‘No More Mr Nice Guy’, ‘Under My Wheels’ one my personal favourites, ‘I’ll Bite Your Face Off plus Billion Dollar Babies’.
‘Caffeine’ speeds past at a heart palpating rate, followed by ‘Revolution’ and Alice’s take on The Jimi Hendrix Experience ‘Foxey Lady’ – which seems to give the song a new twist especially the line “I won’t do you no harm” which is highly unbelievable from the only rockstar who is executed on stage on a nightly basis. ‘Dirty Diamonds‘ the title song from Alice’s 2007 release is a welcome addition to the album showing that his newer material stands up just as well next to his classic songs.

‘He’s Back’ – “The man behind the mask” starts of the second half of this journey in ‘Raise The Dead, Live at Wacken’. ‘Feed my Frankenstein’ is resurrected as a Alice put the pieces of the corpse like puzzle together to before one of the greatest spectacles in rock. The ‘Ballard of Dwight Fry’ gives the audience time to prepare for the scene of pure horror that follows to the sound of Alice’ s death at the sharp end of the Guillotine. When I saw this on Alice’s Dirty Diamonds Tour the executioner asked the audience “shall we behead him” the whole stadium erupted in shouts of “off with his head”, expect two guys a row or two in front of me yelling “No No”-  much to my amusement.

The screaming guitar of ‘Killer’ roles into ‘I love the Dead’ which the audience is shouting at the top of their lungs. Keyboards prelude the intro to The Doors classic ‘Break on through’ which Alice does some justice in my opinion, and then The Who’s ‘My Generation’. Alice dedicates to all his dead drunk friends. ‘I’m eighteen’ and ‘Poison’ round off Alice’s set at Wacken. ‘Schools out‘ and ‘Another Brick in the Wall’ follows for the encore as the band go into over drive to leave the audience wanting more and getting to show off their own talents within the band.

As a fan I hope that Alice will take time out to record another album of brilliant shock rock, which I look forward to reviewing. He is has currently toured with Motley Crue and his solo tour of the USA is selling out fast.

I am a bit disappointed with ‘Raise the Dead’ as a live album is not only about the artist performing to the audience but the audience reaction, it feels like for large part of the album the audience has been edited out. I think that ‘Raise the Dead‘ will be something for die hard fans off Alice but more for those who were lucky enough to see him at Wacken. I am scoring this low purely on the lack of atmosphere and drama that surrounds Alice’s performances. Take my advice and go to a show as you will not be disappointed. ‘Raise The Dead’ crawls out of the graveyard on 30^th of October. If you here from me again you know that Alice isn’t to fussed by my option of one performance.