I can't imagining this equaling or even coming close to the original. I'll keep my good memories of the original (one of my favorite albums of 1975) and pass on this.

Playing it a 2nd time. I don't hate it as much as I did last night, but the anti disco song is still WRETCHED.

Also turns out that the European Deluxe ed (NOT THE COMIC BOOK ED) has a cover of the Animals We've Got To Get Out Of This Place as a bonus track that's not on the USA Best Buy ed. Oddly, the Magazine ed just has 3 of the 4 US bonus trax. So if you're an AC completist, for the music you have to buy the Best Buy & the UK "deluxe"; or both UK versions if you want the comic book. And I haven't even looked at cd Japan!

To spell it out,

Bonus trax:

USA Best Buy
15. Exclusive Bonus Track: Under The Bed (new studio track)
16. Exclusive Bonus Track: Poison (live at the Download Festival)
17. Exclusive Bonus Track: No More Mr. Nice Guy (live at the Download Festival)
18 . Exclusive Bonus Track: Black Widow (live at the Download Festival)

UK Deluxe Edition
15. We Gotta Get Out Of This Place
(Bonus Track)
16. No More Mr. Nice Guy (Live At Download Festival, Bonus Track)
17. The Black Widow (Live At Download Festival, Bonus Track)

UK Collector's Edition
15. Under the bed - bonus track
16. Poison - bonus track live from download
Magazine

Edit: I had to look it up. The Japan edition has 1 bonus track: We've Got To Get Out Of This Place.

I thought Dirty Diamonds was a pretty strong album.

Does anyone know whether any of the live tracks on the Best Buy edition are with the original band?

Currently listening to it. It captures the sound of the Steven Trilogy (Nightmare, Goes To Hell, Lace & Whiskey), but whereas those three albums sounded of their era, this sounds like a failed attempt to recapture one's youth. Reminds me of when my boss was playing Sonic Boom from KISS and convincing himself that it was their best album in decades.

I long ago accepted that Alice will never recapture whatever it was he used to have. He'll either be trying to jump onto musical trends he doesn't quite understand or drift into nostalgia. But he usually scores a song or two I really enjoy, if only because they're wonderfully silly.

Finally got to listen to the back half of the album. Just disappointing and no real comedy stand-outs. Caffiene is no Can't Sleep Clowns Will Eat Me and Ghouls Gone Wild just sounds like it belongs in a zombie remake of Gidget.

The disco and Ke$ha songs are both pretty awful with the first one being as timely as a Vietnam protest song and the second one not being as catchy as a Ke$ha song. These two needed to get mashed together into a catchy parody of today's dance music.

The ballad was dreadful.

Biggest mistake is the Underture which shows you just how big of a come-down the new album is by sampling all the songs of the two albums. The first one is filled with these big, expansive melodies while this album is a lot of mid-temp meh.

According to the extremely small print liner notes, no it is not the original band.

The allmusic review of "Welcome 2 My Nightmare" calls it "not only...an unexpectedly successful sequel but the best Alice Cooper record in decades." I haven't gotten my copy yet (the magazine fan pack is on its way from the UK), but unless it's amazing (which doesn't seem to be the case based on most reviews), I question if the reviewer has actually listened to any of his albums of the last two decades. I would put "Brutal Planet," "Dragontown" and "The Eyes Of Alice Cooper" up there with some of his best work, especially the lyrics.

The teeny liner notes also often show the the great Steve Hunter relegated to rhythm guitar, in favor of some guy named Ted playing lead. HUH??! Disc Wagner is also on 1 track.

After buying the BB edition, I burned it leaving off the disco song. it still does not rank in AC's top releases, but is much more listenable this way.

From reading the lyrics, I THINK the anti disco song is actually an anti gangster rap song masquerading as anti disco, & while I agree with the sentiment, I still find the song irritating. I also strongly suspect this one is pretty brickwalled, Sonically it's a bit irritating; much more so than the EH ITW is played right before it. "Ghouls Gone Wild" is also a bit irritating, Alice meets the Beach Boys.

One final comment: Just got to the studio "bonus track" Under The Bed. It's by far the best song on the entire album. Why is it relegated to bonus track?

iTunes adds the bonus track "A Bad Situation."

Its been a month, is this a must or a pass? I heard the album mentioned on XM Radio the other day but of course they didn't play anything off of it.
The original is a classic to me.

IMO, it's a wait for 3rd party sellers to blow it out, then grab it. Sadly, the best song is one of the BB bonus tracks, "Under The Bed". So you may want to get that edition.

I've listened to it three times and I have to say I really like it. At first I wasn't sure, especially with that auto-tune sound on the first song, the Kesha (er, Ke$ha) guest vocal, the disco song...but then I got into the whole "new nightmare" concept and really started to enjoy it. The three songs with the guys from the original Alice Cooper band are all very good to excellent. I think it's better than "Along Came A Spider," which was trying too hard to be creepy but wasn't as tuneful or diverse as the new one. For a latter-day AC album, it's not on the level of "The Eyes Of Alice Cooper," "Brutal Planet" or "Dragontown," but it's really good. I'm glad I spent the money for the Classic Rock magazine special edition.

Keep in mind it's not even close to the original "Welcome To My NIghtmare," but shouldn't be compared to that after 35 years. I have a tape of me as a 10-year old singing an a capella version of the title song, so I've been a fan of that album for a loooong time.

I picked this up at Best Buy for $10. Is it the equal of the first Nightmare? No, and I didn't expect it to be either. I still liked it, not as much as Along Came a Spider, but I've only listened to it 1-1/2 times. The Last Temptation is my second favorite Cooper concept album next to Nightmare. Nightmare 2 is okay, which is alot better than what I get from some of the artists I used to listen to.

I finally got this too and I really enjoyed it. I don't get why some here diss it so much.

Someone just posted the setlist from a September 2011 show with a couple all star guests. I was very surprised that there is only 1 song (& 1 bonus track) from this album in AC's current show. Apparently Icer's are more positive on the new album than AC is!
01 - Introduction
02 - Train Kept A Rollin' (Aerosmith Cover)
03 - Under My Wheels
04 - No More Mr. Nice Guy
05 - Is It My Body
06 - Brown Sugar (Rolling Stones cover)
07 - I'll Bite Your Face Off
08 - Muscle Of Love
09 - Cold Ethyl
10 - We Gotta Get Out Of This Place (The Animals cover, Euro bonus track from the new album)
11 - Billion Dollar Babies
12 - Break On Through (w/ Robby Krieger, The Doors)
13 - Back Door Man (w/ Robby Krieger, The Doors)
14 - Poison
15 - Eighteen
16 - School's Out w/ Another Brick In The Wall - Pink Floyd - snippet feat. Ke$ha
17 - Elected

"Train Kept A-Rollin'" is an Aerosmith cover?

Yes, half the planet has done it, but I think of it as Aerosmith. I consider their version definitive, & yes I do own the Page/Beck/Yardbirds version.

FYI, there was an hd tv broadcast in the UK of a 2011 Halloween show.

I finally got around to buying the Best Buy edition (on the heels of my mini-sleeves arrving from Japan) and I've been playing it in my car for going on two weeks now. This album is a blast! Rereading some of these posts, I don't get the griping either. I need to go back and grad some of these albums I've missed over the past ten years or so--if they're as "bad" as people say "W2MN" is, I'll probably enjoy the crap out of them.