Raise Your Fist and Yell

Raise Your Fist and Yell is the tenth solo studio album by American rock musician Alice Cooper, released in October 1987, by MCA Records. It features the track “Prince of Darkness”, which is featured very briefly in the John Carpenter film of the same name, in which Cooper has a cameo as a murderous vagrant. The song can be heard on the Walkman of one of his victims. A music video was made for the song "Freedom", which also became the album's sole single. Raise Your Fist and Yell is the only Alice Cooper album to feature Ken K. Mary on drums and the second and last to feature Kip Winger on bass.

Raise Your Fist and Yell
Studio album by
Alice Cooper
ReleasedOctober 1987[1]
Recorded1987
Genre
Length36:53
LabelMCA
ProducerMichael Wagener
Alice Cooper chronology
Constrictor
(1986)		 Raise Your Fist and Yell
(1987)		 Trash
(1989)
Singles from Raise Your Fist and Yell
  1. "Freedom"
    Released: November 1987 (US) [5]
Professional ratings
Review scores
SourceRating
Allmusic [6]
New Musical Express5/10[7]

The album continues the slasher film trend created by Cooper’s previous album Constrictor. The track "Lock Me Up" features a guest appearance from Robert Englund, who portrayed Freddy Krueger in the A Nightmare on Elm Street series.

The album cover for Raise Your Fist and Yell was painted by artist Jim Warren.

Tour

The infamous tour for the album, dubbed "Live in the Flesh", was notorious in Europe in 1988 for its graphic violence and theatricality. The show included many of Cooper's old favourites, such as the gallows (for the first time since 1972), but offered new theatrics such as impaling a person with a bike (this was also seen in John Carpenter's Prince of Darkness, used by Cooper in a cameo role as a vagrant killing one of the characters). Most of the tour's more violent acts were heavily inspired by the horror movies of the time, by including graphic onstage deaths and large amounts of stage blood. Cooper has been said to be a big fan of these movies.

The show was seen to be so violent that the German government forced Cooper to remove some of the more graphic parts of the show. A (blind) Member of Parliament in the UK, David Blunkett, appealed to have the show banned altogether from the country, but his attempt was unsuccessful.

Live performances

Five songs from Raise Your Fist and Yell were played by Cooper during the album's supporting tour: "Freedom", "Prince of Darkness", "Chop Chop Chop", "Gail" and "Roses on White Lace". "Roses on White Lace" was revived as a regular part of setlists for the 2019 "Ol’ Black Eyes Is Back" tour, and "Freedom" was part of the finale for several shows in late 2022 and early 2023 when Kane Roberts returned to the band for a while. Other than those, nothing from "Raise Your Fist and Yell" album has returned to the setlist.

Track listing

All tracks are written by Alice Cooper and Kane Roberts except where noted

Side one
No.TitleLength
1."Freedom"4:09
2."Lock Me Up"3:24
3."Give the Radio Back"3:34
4."Step on You"3:39
5."Not That Kind of Love"3:15
Side two
No.TitleWriter(s)Length
6."Prince of Darkness" 5:10
7."Time to Kill" 3:39
8."Chop, Chop, Chop" 3:06
9."Gail"Cooper, Roberts, Winger2:30
10."Roses on White Lace" 4:27

Personnel

Additional Personnel

Charts
Year Chart Position
1987 The Billboard 200 73
1987 UK Albums Chart 48
1987 Swedish Albums Chart 15
1987 Finnish Albums (Suomen virallinen lista)[8] 36

References
  1. Strong, Martin Charles (1995). The Great Rock Discography. Canongate Press. p. 170. ISBN 9780862415419.
  2. Prince of Darkness - Alice Cooper | Songs, Reviews, Credits | AllMusic, retrieved 2021-04-08, a pair of hard rock albums for MCA: 1986's Constrictor and 1987's Raise Your Fist and Yell;both albums were largely spotty affairs; instead of returning to the raw garage rock of his early-'70s peak, Cooper attempted to stay in step with the then-thriving pop-metal scene
  3. He's Back - Alice Cooper | Songs, Reviews, Credits | AllMusic, retrieved 2021-04-08
  4. "Every Alice Cooper album, ranked from worst to best". Louder Sound. 9 March 2021. Retrieved 2023-07-18.
  5. "Alice cooper singles".
  6. Raise Your Fist and Yell at AllMusic
  7. Pouncey, Edwin (14 November 1987). "Alice Cooper: Raise Your Fist And Yell". New Musical Express. p. 37.
  8. Pennanen, Timo (2021). "Alice Cooper". Sisältää hitin - 2. laitos Levyt ja esittäjät Suomen musiikkilistoilla 1.1.1960–30.6.2021 (PDF) (in Finnish). Helsinki: Kustannusosakeyhtiö Otava. p. 52.
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