Theatre of Death

The show started with a big curtain with a skull of Alice in top hat, syringes, snakes, spiders and other stuff. Then suddenly we saw Alice cast his great shadow on the curtain and it fell and showed us Alice and the band. 

We got some hits and teen angst. Then came Wicked Young Man with Alice militarily marching around in a military uniform hat
singing about a rather scary individual. It's not the games he play or the movies he see or the music he dig, he's just a wicked young
 man, a viscous young man. The kind you suspect to join an extremist group or blow up a school or maybe just shoot some people. Some references in the song are to school killings. He mpales some stooge with a microphone stand and then get caught by other strange individuals running up on the stage and put in a straight white or rather red, vest. Can't have that kind of people running around can we?

Now comes Ballad of Dwight Fry but instead of escaping the vest as usual he get moved to the guillotine that has appeared on the stage and get punished for his crimes. I didn't think of it first but there might some thought behind choosing two teen angst songs/anthems before following up with Wicked Young Man. Might be a transition of character here or reasons for the wicked young man.

Usually the guillotine rolls out and Alice reappears from somewhere else. This time he climbed out from behind the guillotine seemingly surprised that he was alive and
having his head where it was before the beheading. He stumbles
around confused and slowly closes in on the box in front of the guillotine and there finds his head and stares wonderingly at it. Then he decides to move on. Some strange stooges come and equip him with new clothes and we get Go to Hell. In studio and usually on concerts this was sung from the peoples point of view when they accuse Alice for his ''crimes'', with or without proof and wants him to Hell. Here we get Alice singing from his own point of view and no ''You <Alice> can go to Hell'' but ''I can got to Hell'' and ''I've gone to Hell'' in an outfit looking like some kind of voodoo doctor or maybe one of the voodoo spirits I can't remember the name of. Apparently Alice went to Hell when he was killed. We also got Guilty, this song also about the accusations Alice got from people in the old days (and maybe still?) although it's more tongue in cheek than Go to Hell.

Then it slows down a little and we get Welcome to my Nightmare. From somewhere appears strange ghost-ghoul-like individuals. At first they seem to just stumble around aimlessly but as the song proceeds they home in on Alice and forces him up on a stool where they seem to overwhelm him. Alice manages to throw them away and get free and gets hold of one of them that's dressed like a woman. He grips her and throw her away. He then fetches her and she's now switched for a doll and Alice sing Cold Ethyl, the necrophilia song, while abusing the doll (and dances with it). We now pass on to Poison and a nurse with quite a big syringe appears and with some help they kill Alice with an injection or if he's just drugged.

Alice wakes up singing The Awakening which concludes that he killed his wife (the woman in Cold Ethyl?) and that maybe he felt good about it or at least strong. This leads to the drunk Alice in an asylum and From the Inside from the record with the same name. The record was inspired by Alice's staying at a hospital to get out his rather deep alcoholism in the middle of the 70's. Here he met some rather strange char-acters that inspired him to most
of the songs on the record. Some songs was inspired by his own situation and his fear for returning back to a normal life as a sober man, scared for what had went on without him and if his wife and friends would like this new person he had become. From the Inside opens the record and describes how Alice get lost with hisdrinking friends and ends up on the inside of the institution. During Alice's excesses on stage a nurse is taking notes in the background.

Alice follows up with another song from the same record, Nurse Rozetta, about an inmate that's quite on to Nurse Rozetta who, both in the song and on the stage, teases the inmate Alice who now is strapped to a wheel chair in a white dress full of writings he probably have done during his time in the hospital (a little like in the video for Along Came a Spider). The hospital is called The Renfield Nelson Asylum, probably named from the Renfield character and his long time friend Neslon who passed away not long ago. Dedications can be done in many ways…

He gets out from the strapments and get on his feet singing I Love the Dead and then Is it my Body, a song about a guy wondering why the girl wants him. Is it for his body or maybe who he is. Will she take the time to get to know who he really is or just dump him when she gets tired of him? He sings the song to the nurse, still playing the inmate that's turned on by Nurse Rozetta, and Rozetta just laughs at him and taunts him. He then sings Be my Lover, another song about love and different points of view. The nurse still taunts him and starts to undress throwing her stockings at him. Now something pops in the inmate’s head and he stares confused at one of the stockings and puts it over his head and takes the other stocking in both his hands, stretching it between his hands and looks towards the nurse. Then he sneaks up behind her and strangles her.

With Rozetta lying in his lap he sings Only Women Bleeds, a song about a woman that all the time has do to the boring stuff at home, who has to give her man the sex he wants, who has to stay at home while he parties with the guys, smoke and drinks and sometimes slap her. Now it's once again enough and Alice gets
caught and forced to climb the gallows. Here he stands singing I Never Cry, another song about his alcoholism in the 70's until the nurse suddenly just kicks away what he stands on and he gets strangled in the hangman's loop and they take him away hanging in the gallows (dressed in the nurse's wig).

The material for the tour promised ''They keep killing him. He keeps coming back'' So he does now wheeled on stage in a tower where he can look down on everyone singing Vengeance is Mine from the album Along Came a Spider, also about an asylum case. He really lives out the character's ego and follows up with Dirty Diamonds and the usual ''diamond necklaces'' for the audience and then Billion Dollar Babies. He beheads a doll and goes on with the song Killer about, yes, a killer that somehow didn't start out by killing people but ended up that way. Alice once again get caught and put in an ''iron maiden'' and executed once again.

Of course that didn't stop him from returning in the same clothes but with bloody holes after the pikes to sing No More Mr Nice Guy and squeezing the last out of us in Under my Wheels, one of the best live songs. We get one encore, School's Out with Alice in full tails with top hat, all in shiny silver, almost like mirrors. Of course we also get the big balloons.

Full throttle, some ballads, a little story and a little spooky,
great show.