Review by Brian McGowan

Concert Live’s idea of making a CD recording of the gig immediately available to the audience is an excellent one.

And if you miss out at the time you can still buy it online.

Thus, avid fans who were or weren’t there can have a permanent record of the live concert.

And talking of innovation, it’s easy to forget just how groundbreaking Alice Cooper was back in the seventies. His theatrical, grand guignol stage act was considered shocking by many, creating the kind of international publicity that no amount of money could buy. His concerts sell out even now.

But the roar of the greasepaint etc etc is all very well. You don’t achieve this kind of longevity by stagecraft alone.

Unarguably, Cooper’s maintained a witheringly high standard of rock and metal musical output over the last 40 years. He has a tutored ear for a good song and shows fine judgement in choosing musicians for his band.

His song lyrics and album concepts are unusually cerebral for a rock artist, and patronising comments aside, his consistent success is clearly no accident. Alice Cooper is as much as a brand name as Kiss.

‘The Black Widow’ comes from 1975’s ‘Welcome to My Nightmare’, an album cowritten and co-produced with industry legend, Bob Ezrin. Similarly, 2000’s ‘Brutal Planet’ was cowritten and produced by another of the rock music business’s genuine talents, Bob Marlette. And like that and like that. You get the picture.

But the real key point here is that third track on the setlist, ‘I’m Eighteen’ was the debut single from the debut album, and self evidently, it still holds up today.

Vincent Price’s cultured tones are of course de rigeur. And so the show opens in time honoured fashion.

And again, of course, it’s time to look beyond the songs, songs that are lyrically deft, structurally tight and powered with unflinchingly tough melodies.

The current band, including female guitar prodigy, Orianthi and seasoned pro, Glen Sobel, play like it’s their last ever gig, providing the heavy metal artillery, alternately sighing and roaring behind Cooper’s deep, carefully dispensed vocals, a little careworn now and frayed at the edges but always carrying a candid weight of emotion.

Together, they give a tried and tested set an overwhelming sense of momentum that carries the music through the inevitable changes of mood and pace, and through the punctuations provided by thankfully brief and infrequent drum and axe solos.

There are upsides and downsides to live recordings, it’s just the nature of the beast.

On the downside, the mix here is muddy in places. A lot of the time there just isn’t the separation and definition needed to create a satisfying musical dynamic.

On the upside, while eccentricity of performance can conceal songs of real substance, that barrier is removed here.

The band’s performance, ricocheting from a declamatory, stadium filling style – ‘Poison’, ‘Hey Stoopid’, ‘School’s Out’ - through blistering slices of disaffection and rage – ‘Only Women Bleed’, ‘Killer’, to the overtly theatrical, ‘Cold Ethyl’, ‘Feed My Frankenstein’ - provides a very welcome antidote to the cool indifference of the post grunge rock movement.

You just can’t help being impressed by the stamina and back catalogue of an artist (and his band) who’s provided the slash and burn, sex and death rock template from which a thousand rock albums have been struck.

And it’s all here over three discs, including the band’s encore on CD3, fan favourite, ‘Elected’ and a cover of Arthur Brown’s sixties hit ‘Fire’, with Brown himself guesting.

A fittingly generous end to a fabulous night.

7/10