Location: Vienna / Wiener Stadthalle / Austria
Date: Monday, 11/27/2017
Performing: Europe, Alice Cooper
When the concert year starts winding down, things always get a bit hectic. Autumn is always well stocked with gigs. Especially abroad. Every year we need a solid concert alibi for the once-daily concert adventure to the Czech Republic. This year the alibi came in the form of a triple concert trip through the Czech Republic, Slovakia and, for the grand finale, Austria, where on Monday, 11/27/2017, we caught the show of the one and only director of rock’n’roll horror flicks and shockers, the indestructible rock ‘n’ roll excellence that is Alice Cooper, in Vienna. His stop in the Austrian capital was even more special, since the legendary Swedish hard rockers Europe opened the evening before him.
The day before, we’d watched Helloween in Bratislava, Slovakia, and this time we were painfully late getting to the venue. The easygoing, laid-back vibe that’s so easy to pick up while visiting the Czech Republic and Slovakia kind of “lulls” you to sleep, which is not ideal when you’re entering orderly, always punctual Austria, “perfumed” with rules. Sometimes it simply turns out that in crisis moments like these, when the sense of direction in your head packs it in, it would really be better to switch on proper navigation (or get one in the first place). When it’s down to the wire, it’s down to the wire, and it’s not for nothing they say fortune favors the mad and the brave. In the end, everything was just fine.
The Wiener Stadthalle was already enviably packed. The upper tiers stayed closed, covered with a curtain. There must have been about 7,000 people in the venue. Europe got a solid three quarters of an hour and fired off a repertoire that mixes old and new. The band is enjoying a fresh spring, and in its mature years it has leaned, more than ever before, toward the elements of old-school hard rock, expressing even more intensely the influence of pioneering rock acts, from Deep Purple and Rainbow to Thin Lizzy. The band makes exceptionally beautiful, high-quality studio albums in the new era too, and their latest, “Walk the Earth”, with its pronounced atmospheric depth and gloominess, is an excellent follow-up to its otherwise superb predecessor “War of Kings” (2015). The band, in the lineup of John Norum (guitar), Joey Tempest (vocals, guitar), John Leven (bass), Ian Haugland (drums) and Mic Michaeli (keyboards), took a running start and opened the show as expected with the opening pair from the new album, Walk the Earth and The Siege. Joey Tempest exploded on stage right away and dominated with his typical authoritative stage presence, which instantly filled the whole place. The agile, incredibly bouncy singer is also in excellent vocal shape, proving again and again what a great frontman he is, and really the main, essential magnet of the band. The front rows of deeply immersed fans were eating out of his hand. Joey got the job done with loads of stage charisma, plus routine and an incredible bag of experience. The crowd backed him up fiercely in the verses the whole way through. In terms of performance, Europe remain outstanding. Despite all the experience, mileage and routine they’re armed with, you feel in their playing the whole time that there’s still plenty of heart and burning fire, which confirms that the guys are enjoying the joys of the stage immensely even in their mature years. Above all, as ever, he once again stunned with the standard greatness of his contribution — one of the finest guitarists of his generation, the guitar ace and great wizard John Norum, who again didn’t lack dynamite, refined softness and piercing, spicy communion with the strings for even a moment. The man remains a great gentleman and tutor of the six-string bible. Europe spiced up their set, as expected, with a barrage of unforgettable hits. Already at “number three” they decided to bring the crowd to its knees with Rock the Night, then there was the ever-invasive Superstitious, Wing Of Tomorrow, the “gem” Wasted Time, then Cherokee and the closing, much-awaited evergreen giant The Final Countdown. With this kind of form, this kind of stage execution and fire, Europe can’t go wrong even in new times. Let’s hope for another meeting with these priceless masters of old-school Swedish hard rock visionary-ism very soon. On this tour the band also tried out for the first time how the new song GTO works on stage. In Vienna they played it for the very first time, period.
Alice Cooper stormed onto the stage with the backing crew he presented a good year ago at the show in Ljubljana. So, the stage was in a crackle of sparks at the start, similar to Ljubljana, and the band members without Cooper had already taken their positions, with Chuck Garric (bass) and Ryan Roxie (guitar) sticking together to the left of the riser in front of Glen Sobel’s drums, and Nita Strauss (guitar) and Tommy Henkriksen (guitar) on the right. Alice only stepped onto the stage about a minute later, solemnly, dressed in a dark cloak, not forgetting to cast an ominous, coldly grim stare out into the vast hall, which was already boiling like a hornet’s nest. Alice soon “unfolded”, grabbed a cane in his right hand and started “skillfully conducting” with it. A sweetly scary theater was on the menu. Flawless. The crew is awesomely tight. It’s incredible what three guitarists on stage can build if you know how to use them properly. With a cannon of a rhythm section, where Garric’s Thunderbird rattled and tore off its shackles and Sobel’s rolls came crashing down like cannon blasts, the Alice Cooper Band built an exceptional sound in the Stadthalle, and the resulting contact with the crowd, where the chemistry was constantly crackling, was something else. Wherever you stood, you got outstanding sound, and the execution hit the very core of its essence and, while watching the show, kept giving you goosebumps. Incredible tightness, with all three guitarists constantly trading solo spots, and the devilish Nita Strauss taking the initiative, just brimming with incredible energy, ease and joy of life. And here’s the king of shock theater, Alice Cooper, armed with all the villainies and obsessions of the most extremely obscene acts, which of course come across as deliberately bizarre on the stage. Brilliant.
The setlist was pleasantly surprised by the classic The World Needs Guts, which the band hadn’t played live in years, while the repertoire was otherwise fairly similar to the Ljubljana one a year ago, except this time the band didn’t play covers of some rock’n’roll classics. Of the tracks from the latest studio effort “Paranormal”, only Paranoiac Personality rang out, in the second half of the show. Of course, the highlights of every Alice Cooper spectacle are the numbers outfitted with extra stage show theater, like the eternal Feed My Frankenstein, then the hangout of Cooper locked in a straitjacket with a sadomasochistic nurse, with Cooper finally getting his head chopped off on the guillotine during Killer. He later threw it theatrically in among Sobel’s drums. A plastic replica, of course.
A show that doesn’t let you breathe and literally rivets you. With all its intensity and inventiveness, in conducting his stage “orchestra” Alice Cooper often follows the moves of his great teacher Frank Zappa. Every second is precisely calculated for what will happen in it, which means the crew of technicians has to stay intensely focused at all times so Alice Cooper and his gang can pull off a concert loaded with spectacular acts, at a high level, and bring it safely home. There was no shortage of pyrotechnics, smoke curtains and sparkling, crackling inserts, and at the close Alice Cooper of course tackles School’s Out, when giant balloons full of confetti roll off the stage, which Cooper theatrically popped every time one of them got close to his dagger.
Vincent Damon Furnier, as Alice Cooper’s real name goes, turns a round seventy next February, and he remains the guarantee of everything a good rock’n’roll spectacle demands. It’s loaded with a colorful garnish of stage sets, acts of “sobering up” the audience with the shock therapy of excesses on the edge of reality, and a witty bag of humoresques. Absolute fun, no brakes. Sadly, spectacles like this tend to end awfully fast, since they’re so intense in delivering all the information. Whoever watches an Alice Cooper concert is busy down to their bones soaking up all the theater unfolding in front of their eyes. And on top of all that stage theater there’s still the brilliant execution of the highlights of Cooper’s rich career, led by his unmistakable, signature vocals and the presence of a gigantic, towering charisma and spellbinding charm, which guarantees him a unique position on the wide rock map as a cult rock icon and persona!
author: Aleš Podbrežnik
photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Setlist:
EUROPE:
1. Walk the Earth
2. The Siege
3. Rock the Night
4. Last Look at Eden
5. GTO
6. Superstitious
7. Wasted Time
8. Cherokee
9. War of Kings
10. Hole in My Pocket
11. Days of Rock ‘n’ Roll
12. The Final Countdown
ALICE COOPER:
1. Spend the Night (taped intro)
2. Brutal Planet
3. No More Mr. Nice Guy
4. Department of Youth
5. Pain
6. Billion Dollar Babies
7. The World Needs Guts
8. Woman of Mass Distraction (Nita Strauss guitar solo)
9. Poison
10. Halo of Flies (Glen Sobel drum solo)
11. Feed My Frankenstein
12. Cold Ethyl
13. Only Women Bleed
14. Paranoiac Personality
15. Ballad of Dwight Fry
16. Killer
17. I Love the Dead
18. I’m Eighteen
—encore—
19. School’s Out
