Release date: July 29, 2008Rating: 6.5/10
Well, the 60-year-old grandfather of shock rock did it; Alice Cooper (aka Vincent Furnier) has put together a solid collection of jams with which to furnish one of this summer’s more enjoyable albums. There are some funky beats and there’s plenty of sweaty, swampy Southern charm (see “Wake the Dead” for a prime example), but it’s all Alice on Along Came a Spider. The album, however, isn’t just a compilation of five-minute, take-‘em-or-leave-‘em songs, it’s a story that follows it’s principle character, Spider, from stalking his prey to chloroform abductions to fitting perfectly in his trunk to falling in love to institutionalization. What I find most amazing is Alice’s adeptness for creating original and catchy hooks for each track while maintaining the plot found on Along Came a Spider.
OK, so there are no songs about girls kissing girls and how it felt so wrong or how it felt so right, but Along Came a Spider might be your biggest surprise of the summer if you give it a chance. Though following the story of a serial killer as he constructs a spider from human body parts is a bit morbid, the songs themselves are rich with happy classic rock riffs and enough modern crunch to give Disturbed something to contemplate their relevance over. Along Came a Spider is a fun listen this summer and Alice Cooper deserves massive credit for not losing his cool by trying to sound more current than he is; Alice knows his place and stuck to his ‘70s roots, which paid off in tracks like “Vengeance is Mine,” “Wrapped in Silk,” “I’m Hungry,” and “I am the Spider.”
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