Artist: Cooper, Alice
Label: Epic Records
Release: 1994
After three successful years in which touring played a huge role, it’s now time for the third studio album on Epic, and you could say it’s one of Cooper’s best albums, period. Alice shifts his style a bit compared to the previous Hey Stoopid and Trash, and the songs deal more with temptations and desires than with horrors, blood, spiders and so on, which the cover of The Last Temptation already hints at. There’s also a bit more co-writing here than you’d normally expect. The whole story of the album was accompanied by a comic book that got hugely popular and came out in three installments. The album is also the first in a trilogy that continues with Brutal Planet and Dragontown.
The album is stingy on track count, with only ten songs, but every single one is first-class. Many are real classics among the fans, like Sideshow, Nothing’s Free, Bad Place Alone, Unholy War and above all the true epic Cleansed By Fire. Quite a few of them also saw commercial success, like Lost In America, Stolen Prayer and the ballad It’s Me, but it doesn’t quite match the commercial success of earlier years. You can feel a bit of the old style in the creepy “lullaby” Lullaby, which is also a song all on its own, with punchy rhythms. The album is excellent hard rock with excellent guitar riffs and lyrics that tie the vocals and instruments together into a great song.
The tour that accompanied the album also went through a change, and a pretty big one at that, since Cooper ditched his toys like the guillotine. Even so, the show was held together by a theatrical storyline that these songs fit perfectly. Simply put, whatever changes come along, a Cooper concert is one of a kind, unmatched at any time.
The album came about a bit differently from the others, since according to Cooper he opened up completely in a spiritual sense when he became a Christian, and with the album, or rather the message between the lines, he gives the devil the middle finger. Whatever the case, he pulled off a hard rock hit that belongs in every Cooper record collection, or better yet, in every rock collection.
The album is a true classic, even if a little less well known, and I recommend it to everyone who already knows Cooper’s work, and even more to everyone who doesn’t.
Lineup
Alice Cooper – vocals
Stef Burns – guitar
Greg Smith – bass guitar
David Vosikkinen – drums
Derek Sherinian – keyboards
Production
various
Track List
1. Slideshow
2. Nothing’s Free
3. Lost In America
4. Bad Place Alone
5. You’re My Temptation
6. Stolen Prayer
7. Unholy War
8. Lullaby
9. It’s Me
10. Cleansed By Fire
Album Length: 51:01
