80´s Alice Cooper

What can actually be said about Alice Cooper Mid 80´s to early 90´s albums ? I Mean , from "Constrictor" (1986) to "The Last Temptation" (1994) ?

The Last Temptation is brilliant! Love the album. Like the 80's records, but I really think with Last Temptation he managed to mix the best of both worlds; the metal of the 80's with the classic theatrical sound of the 70's.

I agree with ULT, IMO 'Constrictor' is not a bad album, a bit of return to his metal roots with a nod to the 80's pop metal that was happening at the time, a style he abandoned in the early 80's.

'Raise Your Fist and Yell' is a great album, not one of his best, but a damn entertaining album.

'Trash', I have a love/hate thing with this album. I do enjoy it but was never curious to hear what Alice would sound like if he had fronted Bon Jovi.

'Hey Stoopid' was a cool album, where Alice reclaimed some of his identity while keeping up with the pop metal sound he had on 'Trash'

and 'The Last Tempation' was Alice return back to form, with dark humor, popish and gothish elements and great songwriter.

ultmetal wrote:

The Last Temptation is brilliant! Love the album. Like the 80's records, but I really think with Last Temptation he managed to mix the best of both worlds; the metal of the 80's with the classic theatrical sound of the 70's.

"Hey Stoopid" is my personal favorite record from that period, it has lots of killer songs like "Dangerous Tonight" "Snakebite" "Feed My Frankenstein" "Might as Well be on Mars" "Hurricane Years" and "Little By Little"

I will go completely with The Last Temptation here. The others are ok and I'm warming to them, but I never felt "metal" was a match for Alice. Alice is just Alice. If his music is dark, or loud, or angry (etc...) it suits the material he's singing about.

This is a rare case where it was about the message and the persona more than the music. The music just tended (more often than not) to really suit the message and persona. With the "hair metal" Alice albums, it felt a lot like the persona and message were being changed to suit the music and that just sent it all backwards for me.

That said, I'm a HUGE fan of the early 80s Alice albums - we're talking in a way that is probably less healthy than Alice's drug habits at the time - and he barely remembers making those, so take that all with a grain of salt.

I've never been more than a casual Alice fan but I like "Trash" and "Hey Stoopid" quite a bit. I've always meant to dig deeper into his catalog but have never quite gotten around to it...

I will say that when I saw Alice supporting "Hey Stoopid" as part of the 1991 "Operation Rock & Roll Tour" (w/Priest, Motorhead, Dangerous Toys and Metal Church) he put on one of the best stage shows I have ever seen.

Fat Freddy wrote:

I've never been more than a casual Alice fan but I like "Trash" and "Hey Stoopid" quite a bit. I've always meant to dig deeper into his catalog but have never quite gotten around to it...

I will say that when I saw Alice supporting "Hey Stoopid" as part of the 1991 "Operation Rock & Roll Tour" (w/Priest, Motorhead, Dangerous Toys and Metal Church) he put on one of the best stage shows I have ever seen.

I wanted to see that tour and did not go. That tour is the only tour that Alice and Judas Priest were involved with that lost any money, from what I read. I was surprised, you have two headliners doing a full set, I wonder if it was just badly promoted

Quote :

I wanted to see that tour and did not go. That tour is the only tour that Alice and Judas Priest were involved with that lost any money, from what I read. I was surprised, you have two headliners doing a full set, I wonder if it was just badly promoted

Yeah, it was a good show, but by all accounts, behind the scenes that tour was a total train wreck, haha. I think there were several factors that played into its failure.  

First of all, it was 1991 and the musical tides were already a-changing. The kids were going to Lollapalooza that summer,, not Operation Rock & Roll. If they'd put that tour together a year or 18 months earlier, it probably would've done gangbuster business. I remember that several times during the show I looked around the arena (the Meadowlands in New Jersey) and saw that the place was half empty, there was nobody in the upper tier at all.  I had never seen that at a metal show in that arena before.

Also, Priest had just come thru the area in late 1990 on their own Painkiller tour and now here they were again, playing the same arena just seven or eight months later. My friends and I had no problems with seeing Priest again so soon cuz we were fan boys, of course, but we were obviously the exceptions, not the rule.

Also, having five bands on the bill (two of which - Priest and Alice - did full headlining sets) was just too damn many for an evening concert. If the shows had been booked as all day festivals on Saturdays or Sundays and the first band went on in mid/late afternoon, it might have worked, but the timing sucked on a weeknight when people are at work all day and then have to make it to the show.

I felt sorriest for Metal Church, who were the first band up and who had to go on at 6:30 PM...there was almost nobody in the arena that early, cuz everyone was still stuck in rush hour traffic trying to get to the venue. I swear they basically played for me, my friends, the t-shirt/merch stand guys, and various random arena employees. I was actually embarrassed for them. I half expected Mike Howe to walk off the stage, come down by my friends and I and ask, "Okay, guys, what do you want to hear?"

Honestly, they could've easily dropped Dangerous Toys from the lineup, mind you I have nothin' against DT (I like'em, tho I will confess they were not very good live that night) but one less band would've improved the flow of the entire evening. Dangerous Toys got no love from the crowd anyway, they were heckled mercilessly throughout their set and were basically boo'd off the stage. The biggest ovation they got came when their stage banner was taken down and Motorhead's went up, haha.

If nothing else, the failure of that tour was a pretty big wake up call that the Metal Party was over and rough seas were ahead. Rob Halford left Judas Priest at its conclusion and several of the other bands on the tour - Motorhead, Dangerous Toys, and Metal Church  - all got dropped by the major labels shortly afterwards.

I would not group together The Last Temptation with these albums. That album is sort of in no man's land because nothing came after it for a while, but what preceded it and what came after sounds totally different. It would be my least favourite of the 5, but still a good record.

Constrictor is a solid album, but it has 4 really killer tunes: Teenage Frankenstein, Life and Death of the Party, The World Needs Guts, and He's Back (The Man Behind The Mask).

Raise Your Fist and Yell is an awesome, full-blown metal album. Not a single bad track, and many of Alice's best ever.

Trash is one of the most underrated Alice album, simply because the popular crowd only knows of Poison, while most of the hardcore Alice fans don't like it because it was commercial. I think it's a strong record from start to finish. The first four tracks are especially potent, but I also love Bed of Nails and Hell Is Living Without You.

Hey Stoopid is a top-5 Alice album for me. Dangerous Tonight and Might As Well Be On Mars are his two most underrated songs ever. Both absolutely classic. The rest of the album is killer too. A bit long, perhaps, but when there is not a single weak song, it's worthwhile.

Raise Your Fist and Yell is my favorite Alice Cooper album. I had Trash, Hey Stoopid, and The Last Temptation on cassette but I never upgraded to CD on those. The Last Temptation is very good.

Have yet to hear anything from Alice that I haven't liked. I really enjoy Trash and Hey Stoopid. The Last Temptation is kind of a mixed bag for me, but it contains my first (and one of my favorite) AC songs:

The Last Temptation just made me happy because it marked Alice's return to conceptual territory and even a "bad" AC concept album is still pretty badass (see "Lace & Whiskey" or "DaDa").

Even with how heavy-handed I thought Dragontown was on the religious side, I really appreciated the unified theme between it and Brutal Planet. Alice as a character was always a hair away from being the Devil giggling with glee as mankind destroyed itself and those albums really brought that element of the persona to the forefront. That said, songs like "Too Late" probably could have used some subtlety.   

That trend (i.e. Alice really wearing the "born again" thing on his sleeve in song) started with The Last Temptation, but it essentially put it in the form of a parable, which is so beautifully subversive that I am contractually bound to love it.   

I only have Hey Stoopid and really like it although that seems to be a release just about everyone hates (Trash seems to get a lot of derision too).I really want to get more Alice Cooper in my collection but there's just too many cds to buy and not enough money to go around.

I like just about all of Alice's wprk, my favorite though is Special Forces. It's a cool oddball sinister sounding new wave album that still sounds like and has the humor of AC. I like Flush the Fashion a lot too.

I think his 80's stuff is pretty cool and most of it has aged pretty well. Hey Stoopid is fun and Last Temptation is amazing.

I like his 80s stuff..

  

 

As casual AC, and an avid 80s fan those are the only Alice Cooper albums I own and I like them all. 1987 is probably my favorite. Kane Roberts and Kip Winger were a great tandem and wrote some totally amazing tunes (Gail, Roses on White Lace, Time to Kill, etc.)

P.S. just realized Alice Cooper is not on metal-archives, PFFFT!

He also wrote the best 80s new wave song ever:

All 5 records in question are classics.

I have no interest in anything from Alice in the 80's. Anything up to around 1978 and then from The Last Temptation ('94) and forward from that. The early 80's stuff is too "new wave" and the late 80's stuff is too "slick Bon-Jovi fluff".

MetalGuy71 wrote:

I have no interest in anything from Alice in the 80's. Anything up to around 1978 and then from The Last Temptation ('94) and forward from that. The early 80's stuff is too "new wave" and the late 80's stuff is too "slick Bon-Jovi fluff".

Though I love the album, I can get putting "Trash" into the slick Bon Jovi category, but Constrictor and Fist are much more metal than that, and Hey Stoopid is too, in my opinion. Given that you are okay listening to bands like LA Guns, Skid Row and Enuff Z Nuff, I don't really see why you might have an issue with those records really?

Wow - that's a lot of thumbs up for "Last Temptation" -
might have to scan ebay   
Always liked "Trash" - but not GNR's involvement -
esp. their cover of " Under My Wheels " -
Axl seemed to want to make all good cover songs his own -
Krokus doing "School's Out" was the worst -
Lita Ford's "Only Women Bleed" - was ok....

ZombieHavoc wrote:

MetalGuy71 wrote:

I have no interest in anything from Alice in the 80's. Anything up to around 1978 and then from The Last Temptation ('94) and forward from that. The early 80's stuff is too "new wave" and the late 80's stuff is too "slick Bon-Jovi fluff".

Though I love the album, I can get putting "Trash" into the slick Bon Jovi category, but Constrictor and Fist are much more metal than that, and Hey Stoopid is too, in my opinion. Given that you are okay listening to bands like LA Guns, Skid Row and Enuff Z Nuff, I don't really see why you might have an issue with those records really?

Not that I have any issue, per say. I've heard cuts from them and while they weren't terrible or anything, I just couldn't see listening to them on a regular basis. I think I had Trash on tape at one point. With a discography so vast and a sound so identifiable, I can't imagine a time when I'd pull out any of those 80's albums when I need a shot of Coop.

His 70's stuff is so damn good and his later output is great too. No point it buying albums I know I wouldn't listen to. If I'm that desperate to hear stuff from the 80's, I can always pull a disc from the box set that covers that era.

MetalGuy71 wrote:

I have no interest in anything from Alice in the 80's. Anything up to around 1978 and then from The Last Temptation ('94) and forward from that. The early 80's stuff is too "new wave" and the late 80's stuff is too "slick Bon-Jovi fluff".

I personally loved his New Wave era (which seems to have been influenced more by blow, whiskey and lack of artistic direction), Flush the Fashion, Special Forces and DA DA are all worthy of the Coop, 'Zipper Catches Skin' is the weakest one of that era.

MetalGuy71 wrote:

ZombieHavoc wrote:

MetalGuy71 wrote:

I have no interest in anything from Alice in the 80's. Anything up to around 1978 and then from The Last Temptation ('94) and forward from that. The early 80's stuff is too "new wave" and the late 80's stuff is too "slick Bon-Jovi fluff".

Though I love the album, I can get putting "Trash" into the slick Bon Jovi category, but Constrictor and Fist are much more metal than that, and Hey Stoopid is too, in my opinion. Given that you are okay listening to bands like LA Guns, Skid Row and Enuff Z Nuff, I don't really see why you might have an issue with those records really?

Not that I have any issue, per say. I've heard cuts from them and while they weren't terrible or anything, I just couldn't see listening to them on a regular basis. I think I had Trash on tape at one point. With a discography so vast and a sound so identifiable, I can't imagine a time when I'd pull out any of those 80's albums when I need a shot of Coop.

His 70's stuff is so damn good and his later output is great too. No point it buying albums I know I wouldn't listen to. If I'm that desperate to hear stuff from the 80's, I can always pull a disc from the box set that covers that era.

I'll accept that answer. Ha. By the by, and speaking of the boxed set...I wish "Hard Rock Summer" would've made it to the Constrictor album proper. One of my favorite tunes by AC.

manny wrote:

MetalGuy71 wrote:

I have no interest in anything from Alice in the 80's. Anything up to around 1978 and then from The Last Temptation ('94) and forward from that. The early 80's stuff is too "new wave" and the late 80's stuff is too "slick Bon-Jovi fluff".

I personally loved his New Wave era (which seems to have been influenced more by blow, whiskey and lack of artistic direction), Flush the Fashion, Special Forces and DA DA are all worthy of the Coop, 'Zipper Catches Skin' is the weakest one of that era.

Ditto.