ALICE COOPER
Theatre of Death – Live at Hammersmith 2009

No-one NEEDS another Alice Cooper live album at this stage of the macabre cabaret metal pioneer’s career, but Theatre of Death is here nonetheless.

As you’d expect, all the essential classics are present and accounted for from ‘Schools Out’ to ‘Under My Wheels’, via ‘Only Women Bleed’, ‘Go To Hell’, ‘I’m Eighteen’ and so on. The Seventies are heavily represented, with only four of the twenty seven tracks here representing the past three decades.

The temptation, logically, is to assume that Cooper’s first full decade of recording far eclipsed everything he has since done, but as much as these are all great tracks, I have to admit I’d love to hear him playing some songs from “Constrictor”, “Raise Your Fist And Yell”, “Trash”, “The Eyes Of Alice Cooper” or any of his many post-seventies albums. I guess though, that isn’t about to happen until he stops using the same tunes as the narrative for the stage show he has been dragging round the world with small variations for some years now.

Musically it’s all good and entertaining, but without seeing the high camp drama unfolding, it’s nothing you’ve not heard before but an entertaining distraction.

Shane Rockpit

Thanks to Sony for the review copy of ALICE COOPER “Theatre of Death”