Published on Oct 23, 2001
Yup, that’s exactly what this album is, trash.
My rating for this album will probably surprise a few people,
but to me this is the worst album of Alice Cooper’s career. I
assume that after panicking due to a lacklustre commercial response
to the previous two comeback albums (the woeful
Constrictor and the laughable
Raise Your Fist And Yell), he decided to get a who’s-who of
record industry big shots to meticulously craft a “perfect”
comeback album which could not fail to ignite sales.
Oh,
Trash was very successful in that sense…upon its release
in 1989, I believe it became one of the best selling Alice Cooper
records ever, if not the best, but not because of superb
songwriting…almost all of the songs are soul-less, middle of the
road obvious attempts at commercial success rather than trying to
say something interesting. Except for “Poison”, which admittedly is
a good song, the rest of the material is utter lowest common
denominator, safe, gut wrenchingly nauseating, standard 80’s
mainstream pop metal shlock. A completely overproduced turd.
Ironically, after many lyrical tales and stories on excellent
past albums about going to hell, selling your soul, and other stuff
along those lines, Alice sold himself out to get a big hit again.
The whole thing sounds like Alice told renowned predictable
corporate rock hit-maker extraordinaire Desmond Child (who also
produced the album into the slickly polished quagmire that it is)
and his fellow pencil pushing big wigs to give him a hit album,
which they created, and then had him come in and sing what they
told him to.
It feels like Alice had very little input in the creative
process at all…during his classic period, he never stooped to the
total low brow lyrics and subject matter, like stupid infatuations,
sex and mindless sleaze from the perspective of a twelve year old,
and even had the gall to try to sound serious doing it in a slew of
horrible Bon Jovi/80’s Aerosmith style power ballads and tame rock
songs that this album is awash in…the style doesn’t suit Alice
one iota. He sounds completely out of place. And guess what boys
and girls! Take one guess as to who makes a guest appearance on
this album! Vincent Price? Oh no, now that would be much too
frightening and might hurt potential sales…no no, it’s none other
than Bon Jovi and Aerosmith! *applause*….yah right, this
abomination sounds more like a Bon Jovi or Aerosmith album with
Alice doing guest vocals, than as an Alice Cooper album.
What a triumph for marketing though…but then again, people in
general are stupid sheep who will buy anything that is considered
“in” or “trendy”, which are things that are totally determined by
large record companys’ in-your-face propaganda… like mindless
cattle they will flock to whatever they see advertised or what they
might hear things about, especially if they think that owning the
particular album in question will make them popular. How sick.
So, after that bitter little tangent, my summary is this:
“Poison” is the only good song contained on the fittingly titled
Trash, and the rest is complete filler that doesn’t have,
even for a second, not even a hint of any of the qualities which
made Alice Cooper the genius that he was with his endless talent
for being insightful, intelligent, humourous, and scary, often at
the same time, in the past.
Who is this guy? I don’t know this Alice, and I don’t even think
Alice knows the Alice on here, because the only recognition
he ever gives this disc during his live shows these days is by
playing “Poison” and nothing else, while he still perfoms virtually
all of the material from albums that are almost twenty years older
than
Trash. Believe me, that speaks volumes in itself.
When I listen to this, I have a vision of an assembly line of
pop metal cd’s flying past on a factory conveyor belt in 1989, with
each disc containing the identical music, but the manufacturer
would get labels randomly alternating between Bon Jovi, Aerosmith,
Alice Cooper, etc.
The album is completely devoid of soul from one of rock’s most
soulful songwriters. This is not Alice Cooper in my opinion…this
is disposable pop metal that hilariously enough sounds more dated
than anything he recorded in the 70’s. So, it may have sold several
million trendy copies, but it sure as hell didn’t yield any
classics or fan favourites for his glorious resume. Hands down the
worst album of his illustrious career, and along with
Constrictor perhaps the only one I would be embarrassed to
play in front of anybody.
However, I admit that I don’t really blame him for going this
route because he hadn’t had a successful album in over a decade by
1989, and I’m sure he didn’t want to wind up trying to make ends
meet at age 65 by playing dingy bars in Topeka to five drunks and a
poodle. That having been said, the album was clearly designed in a
very shrewd and calculating manner as a one shot gimmick with its
overtly dumbed-down approach and radio friendly syrupy pop hooks to
appeal to horny teenagers in the late 80’s…so, unless you were
one of those horny airheaded teens in the late 80’s who subscribed
to this tripe, chances are you won’t find much to like about this
lyrically vapid, bottom-of-the-barrel scraping joke. Man, at least
Raise Your Fist And Yell was funny. Fans of Alice’s harder,
edgier, intelligent work will loathe this conforming empty
schlock.
At the risk of sounding redundant, I’m just so carried away that
I feel I must recap my thoughts in order to effectively hammer home
the point: This is Alice Cooper’s worst album hands down because
it’s simply not an Alice Cooper album; it’s an album crafted from a
cookie cutter mold by a big corporation according to the purely
current trend of that time. I can totally understand why this
shitlog was so popular at the time, but it’s also painfully obvious
why real Cooper fans have disowned it. Gives a totally false
impression of an otherwise brilliant artist. An insult to all Coop
fans. Offensively bad.
There, I believe the record is set straight that this is his
darkest hour and that nobody should own it. I start to tremble and
break out in sweat everytime I think what a shocking amount of
people not just consider this to be a good album, but actually have
that magical level of stupidity that they think this is one of his
best works.
Sheesh…welcome to MY nightmare indeed.