Alice Cooper: Raise The Dead: Live From Wacken

All the old favourites, and some creepy covers.

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Cooper’s performance at the famed German open-air festival last summer was conceived as a three-act musical, equal parts comedy and horror, sequencing favourites from his long recording career to tell a complete story.

However, when his own songs don’t fit the bill, Alice gleefully borrows from other greats. The lasciviousness of Foxy Lady is bolstered by an added sense of menace that perhaps even Jimi Hendrix might have shied away from, although the charge through The Who’s My Generation is relatively by the book. Best of all is the segue from School’s Out into Another Brick In The Wall, the latter dripping with an anger and defiance absent from the Pink Floyd original.

The recorded sound is a tad muddy in places, but that’s soon forgotten when viewing the macabre circus of the visuals on the accompanying DVD, the master showman at his most terrifying on I Love The Dead./o:p

Terry Staunton was a senior editor at NME for ten years before joined the founding editorial team of Uncut. Now freelance, specialising in music, film and television, his work has appeared in Classic Rock, The Times, Vox, Jack, Record Collector, Creem, The Village Voice, Hot Press, Sour Mash, Get Rhythm, Uncut DVD, When Saturday Comes, DVD World, Radio Times and on the website Music365.