Alice Cooper: Welcome 2 My Nightmare - Album artwork and track listing

I finally had a chance to look at the fan pack magazine over the weekend and it's a great read. Definitely recommended for all fans of Alice, especially those who own all of the albums since they talk about every single one

kmorg wrote:

The new album does only sound similar to the original when they use the music that was on the original! The new one totally lacks the eerie feelong of the original, and sounds more like a state fare (sp?) then a nightmare!

I like the album, but it would have felt even better without the "Welcome 2 my Nightmare" name! This should not have been a follow up album, just as soooooooooo many other lame cash-in sequels!

I didn't get it at first either, but the more I listened, the more it seemed to make sense. It's more of a journey through hell than just a nightmare though.

I usually poo-poo sequels as well, but this one makes good. Been a coupla weeks now and I'm still digging this album.

MetalGuy71 wrote:

It's more of a journey through hell than just a nightmare though.

Quite a contrast. Most musicians when the convert to Christianity sing about God's love. Alice chooses to focus on hell (ever since The Last Temptation), but of course it was his only course of action. Who would accept a worship album from Alice Cooper? He'd be too religious for the secular market and too secular for the religious market. He said himself that if he went with a message of love, peace, and understanding that nobody would listen to him. His character fits perfectly in the prophet of doom mould.

MetalGuy71 wrote:

kmorg wrote:

The new album does only sound similar to the original when they use the music that was on the original! The new one totally lacks the eerie feelong of the original, and sounds more like a state fare (sp?) then a nightmare!

I like the album, but it would have felt even better without the "Welcome 2 my Nightmare" name! This should not have been a follow up album, just as soooooooooo many other lame cash-in sequels!

I didn't get it at first either, but the more I listened, the more it seemed to make sense. It's more of a journey through hell than just a nightmare though.

I usually poo-poo sequels as well, but this one makes good. Been a coupla weeks now and I'm still digging this album.

Ypu know, I've been listening like crazy to this over the last days, and I agree with you!! It makes more sense now!! It's not a creepy nightmare, but still a cool concept. Not sure why they have an opening song that is not a part of the conceot though. The same is true also for the closer, I think.

Musically 'Welcome 2 My Nightmare' is GREAT though. It's a really fun album, with loads of diversity, but always easily recognizable as Alice! This is one of my favorite albums this year!

kmorg wrote:

MetalGuy71 wrote:

kmorg wrote:

The new album does only sound similar to the original when they use the music that was on the original! The new one totally lacks the eerie feelong of the original, and sounds more like a state fare (sp?) then a nightmare!

I like the album, but it would have felt even better without the "Welcome 2 my Nightmare" name! This should not have been a follow up album, just as soooooooooo many other lame cash-in sequels!

I didn't get it at first either, but the more I listened, the more it seemed to make sense. It's more of a journey through hell than just a nightmare though.

I usually poo-poo sequels as well, but this one makes good. Been a coupla weeks now and I'm still digging this album.

Ypu know, I've been listening like crazy to this over the last days, and I agree with you!! It makes more sense now!! It's not a creepy nightmare, but still a cool concept. Not sure why they have an opening song that is not a part of the conceot though. The same is true also for the closer, I think.

Musically 'Welcome 2 My Nightmare' is GREAT though. It's a really fun album, with loads of diversity, but always easily recognizable as Alice! This is one of my favorite albums this year!

As it stands right now (depending on Iced Earth and Theocracy), this is my top album so far.

kmorg wrote:

MetalGuy71 wrote:

kmorg wrote:

The new album does only sound similar to the original when they use the music that was on the original! The new one totally lacks the eerie feelong of the original, and sounds more like a state fare (sp?) then a nightmare!

I like the album, but it would have felt even better without the "Welcome 2 my Nightmare" name! This should not have been a follow up album, just as soooooooooo many other lame cash-in sequels!

I didn't get it at first either, but the more I listened, the more it seemed to make sense. It's more of a journey through hell than just a nightmare though.

I usually poo-poo sequels as well, but this one makes good. Been a coupla weeks now and I'm still digging this album.

Ypu know, I've been listening like crazy to this over the last days, and I agree with you!! It makes more sense now!! It's not a creepy nightmare, but still a cool concept. Not sure why they have an opening song that is not a part of the conceot though. The same is true also for the closer, I think.

Musically 'Welcome 2 My Nightmare' is GREAT though. It's a really fun album, with loads of diversity, but always easily recognizable as Alice! This is one of my favorite albums this year!

one of my favorites too. Alice got it done on this effort.

I finally snagged a Best Buy copy and I really enjoyed it. Definitely an array of styles but it all still sounds as Alice.

ultmetal wrote:

I finally snagged a Best Buy copy and I really enjoyed it. Definitely an array of styles but it all still sounds as Alice.

it really does. I think he sounds great on this release.

Black Friday deal.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005F6NA4W

Currently $4.99. If, like me, you have Amazon Prime, it's free two-day shipping, too. Won't last long, so if you don't have it, snag it now.

I don't usually bring back dead threads...but whatever. Yesterday I listened to the commentary track Alice does for Welcome 2 My Nightmare that is part of the iTunes edition of the record.

For the first time, the album really came together for me as a cohesive story. I enjoyed the album well enough, but it never really felt like a concept album the way Along Came A Spider or Welcome to My Nightmare did. The commentary fixed that for me, though (but I guess you shouldn't have to explain your joke, right?) and I can now connect dots I did not connect before. I listened to the album front to back this morning, and was really immersed in it...far more than I was before.

With Spider, not only was the story cohesive, but the sound was too. On W2MN, the songs all sounded so disjointed, sound-wise. But when he goes over not only the story, but the writing process, how things came to be, why he wanted it to sound like such and such--it all started making sense to me.

So yeah, just felt like sharing, since I've got a fresh take on this three-year-old record.

I love W2MN but felt the same way , I did see how the songs tied together to the same thread, til I listened to the album half a dozen times.

The reaction I had to the original WtMN was probably the opposite. I thought it was a lot more disjointed musically until the back half. But, when the concept is a nightmare, that works.

With the new one, I approached it in the same vein, so the diversity in musical styles didn't really disturb me any. If anything, it made more of an effort to segue the ideas from song to song than the original did (there certainly wasn't a "wrap up" song like "I Gotta Get Out of Here" at the end of the original to tie the narrative together).

With the Underture, I just really dug it as a tribute - almost a bonus track to the album. The only wish I had for it is that it should have ended with the "Steven" piano bit that opens the album instead of the way it did. It would have been cool to have that "Pink Floyd" effect of having the beginning and ending of the album link up.

Funny, I got the story line and concept right off the bat with this album. Well, at least what I think it is. And I NEVER get those concept albums.

Well, I guess I got the basic ideas--he thinks he's in a nightmare, turns out he's dead (What part of dead don't you get, etc.)

And things like Caffeine, that fit int--he wants to stay awake to avoid the nightmare.

Not a revelation, but I didn't really pick up on that A Runaway Train and Last Man on Earth were like their own little pre-nightmares before getting into the real nightmare.

I definitely did not get that I'll Bite Your Face Off was him being introduced to his guide through the nightmare (hell).

The ideas behind Disco, Ghouls Gone Wild and Something to Remember Me By I did not pick up. I didn't realize she was just kind of taking him around these weird nightmarish places--though the first two specifically are more jokey. In the commentary he's like a disco full of dead people that keep coming back to life...it's because disco will never die--there's the nightmare.

I guess mostly I could accept the kind of disjointed and weird ideas being part a larger nightmare. That made sense, but still didn't feel cohesive. Being pointed in the direction that he's dreaming about being strapped to a train, and then dreaming himself into this Burgess Meredith-like Twilight Zone episode, and then meeting his guide, and her taking him around all these weird places (some darker than others, like When Hell Comes Home), before he finally realizes it's not a nightmare, and that he's dead and that his guide has been the devil.

I don't know, I didn't get all that. Ha. I kinda wish I had a commentary track for all of his records, concept or otherwise, just to get all that insight and influence right there in the forefront.

ZombieHavoc wrote:

Well, I guess I got the basic ideas--he thinks he's in a nightmare, turns out he's dead (What part of dead don't you get, etc.)

Woah, jeeze... Spoiler alert. Next you'll be telling us that Snape kills Dumbledor... Ooops...   

ZombieHavoc wrote:

I definitely did not get that I'll Bite Your Face Off was him being introduced to his guide through the nightmare (hell).

Yeah, I didn't get this either, but since we're talking about a nightmare, what could be scarier than a femme fatale? It's not like Alice hasn't used those before - Mercy from The Last Temptation or Nurse Rosetta off From the Inside, for example. I always assumed that's what this was until I pulled up the wiki page.

ZombieHavoc wrote:

I guess mostly I could accept the kind of disjointed and weird ideas being part a larger nightmare. That made sense, but still didn't feel cohesive. Being pointed in the direction that he's dreaming about being strapped to a train, and then dreaming himself into this Burgess Meredith-like Twilight Zone episode, and then meeting his guide, and her taking him around all these weird places (some darker than others, like When Hell Comes Home), before he finally realizes it's not a nightmare, and that he's dead and that his guide has been the devil.

I don't know, I didn't get all that. Ha. I kinda wish I had a commentary track for all of his records, concept or otherwise, just to get all that insight and influence right there in the forefront.

Actually, yeah. I'll second that. It's not a bad concept or execution by any stretch (see "Radio KAOS" by Roger Waters for that - love the album, but yeesh), but you are right that it does take kind of an abrupt right turn at the end.

I was VERY amused by the backing choir's appearance in "I Gotta Get Outta Here" though. It reminded me immediately of "Give the Kid a Break" off of "Goes to Hell," which is definitely a favorite of mine.

If nothing else, this is one of those instances of an artist writing a love letter to the fans and pulling it off beautifully without making the album a fanboys-only experience. There's stuff here that harks back to a number of his "classic" albums beyond just the original Nightmare and it does it well without feeling like he's just self-plagiarizing. It's what separates this album from the second Mindcrime album. That felt like a committee creation ("We need to tick the right boxes and make sure this sounds right") and this is much more a case of legitimately getting the old crew back together and doing the thing up right by just having fun with it. I mean, if nothing else, this record is a hell of a lot of FUN to listen to, even in its darker points and I'm inclined to believe it's hard to write a fun album if you weren't having fun making it.

I never really thought about it as a concept album, I just enjoyed the music. Interesting though.

I think Welcome 2 is decent album but disjointed as far as telling a story goes. But I've read either Alice or Ezrin saying something along the lines of "it's a dream/nightmare, so of course it doesn't make sense". I try not to get to caught up in the concepts of an album anyway and just enjoy the songs individually.

Hell, it gets points from me simply for making Kesha cool. That alone should earn it a high ranking.

I do want to clarify that I never meant to imply I didn't enjoy the album before. I've enjoyed it since it came out, and still spin it. It didn't stick with me like Spider did, but I still really like it.

I just now like it on a grander scale, I guess.