ALICE COOPER — Hey Stoopid (review)

Album · 1991 · Glam Metal

3/5 · 2010-09-17
Time Signature

Rock is a loaded gun...

"Hey Stoopid" is the follow up to the massively popular "Trash", and thus this release is under some pressure. Alice Cooper meets this challenge by pulling out the heavy artillery, allying himself with the likes of guitar heroes Vinnie Moore, Slash, Joe Satriani, and Steve Vai as well as rock super stars Mick Mars, Nikki Sixx and Ozzy Osbourne all of whom serve as guest stars (the album also features Derek Sherinian on keyboards).

And while this certainly makes this album interesting, quality does not lie in the host of guest stars (although, I should mention that there is amazing guitar licks galore on this album), but in the music itself, and I must admit that I think that this album is a bit lackluster at times.

There are a lot of solid but not outstanding hard rock tracks on this album, such as the title track, "Dangerous Tonight", "Dangerous Tonight", "Feed My Frankenstein", "Hurricane Years", "Dirty Dreams" and "Wind-Up Toy". All of these tracks have their strengths such as catchy choruses and amazing guitar licks by both the guest stars and Cooper's own guitarist Stef Burns, but most of these tracks also contain some very bland and standard elements, and - with the exception of "Hurricane Years" and "Feed My Frankenstein", I am ambivalent towards them. A good example of this is "Snake Bite", which contains some really, really, really nice guitar riffage (the kind of riffage I've hoped to get the chance to play and write myself for years), but at the same time a lot of the vocal lines are incredibly uninspiring (the chorus is extremely catchy though).

Another downside is the many insignificant ballads on this album. Now, I do not hate ballads (I love it when a good ballad comes together), but I just think that good ballads that mean something are hard to come by. This album contains several power ballads, most of which are pretty standard, and to me it seems that Alice Cooper is accommodating to the conventions of hard the hard rock and mainstream metal of the late 1980s and early 1990s which required that there were several power ballads on a hard rock release. Ballad tracks like "Burning Our Bed", "Love's a Loaded Gun", "Die For You" are pretty boring, while "Might As Well Be On Mars" and "Little By Little" work quite well and manage to generate a dark and brooding atmosphere (the latter ekes out a bit, though, I think - great chorus though).

This album is in itself worth 2,5 stars, but in recognition of the performances by the musicians and guest musicians on this release, I'll give it three stars, because there are some really great guitar performances here, and fans of guitar solos and rock riffage might want to buy this album just for that reason. This album does have its moments, and many of them, and tracks like "Feed My Frankenstein" and "Might As Well Be on Mars" are quite good. I am sure that fans of melodic hard rock and 80s/90s glam metal will like this album.