Alice Cooper – Raise Your Fist And Yell
Album Review by Adam McCann
Band : Alice Cooper
Album: Raise Your Fist And Yell
MCA Records 1987
Following the success of Alice Cooper’s comeback album ‘Constrictor’ in 1986, the master of horror vaudeville decided to strike whilst the iron was hot and capitalise on the back of MTV rotation, high record sales and lucrative tour by releasing ‘Raise Your First and Yell’ less than a year later in 1987.
Keeping the core band of Alice, artisan song craftsman Kip Winger and Rambo Action Man come guitarist Kane Roberts, ‘Raise Your Fist and Yell’ continued Alice’s foray into 80’s heavy metal. Ever the chameleon, Alice Cooper managed to keep his audience from the 70’s and continue dragging the kids in with a big MTV video for the hard-hitting anthem ‘Freedom’, whilst ‘Raise Your Fist and Yell’ also received airplay due to the pseudo-Christian ‘Prince of Darkness’, achieving fame as being part of the movie of the same name.
As an album, ‘Raise Your Fist and Yell’ pales in comparison to ‘Constrictor’ and kind of feels like the little brother. However, there are some great tracks as Alice turns up the heat on slasher themed songs, tapping into the cult obsessions with movies such as ‘Halloween’ and ‘Nightmare on Elm Street’, the latter of which see’s Robert Englund guest on crowd pleasing ‘Lock Me Up’.
‘Raise Your Fist and Yell’ does suffer from a rather lacklustre middle section, but it does find its feet again with the final few tracks. Taken on their own, ‘Chop, Chop, Chop’ and ‘Gail aren’t exactly great, but when coupled back to back with the utterly superb ‘Roses on White Lace’, the ‘murder suite’ saves a potentially poor end to an album.
For Alice Cooper, ‘Raise Your Fist and Yell’ would provide the catalyst between ‘Constrictor’ and the runaway success of ‘Trash’ and ‘Hey Stoopid!’, it saw Alice consolidate his comeback whilst hauling in a new audience and whilst it may be nowhere near Alice Cooper’s greatest works, there’s still enough decent tracks here to keep you occupied.
Rating : 78/100
MHF Magazine/Adam McCann
