10 Scariest Albums Ever Made

Alice Cooper will forever be known as the original shock rocker. While acts like Arthur Brown and Screaming Jay Hawkins may have used macabre theatrics in their shows, Cooper was the first one to take the more outlandish sides of rock and roll and put it on top of the charts.

Even when his backing band abandoned him, Welcome to My Nightmare became one of the most high profile shock rock albums of the golden age of rock and roll.

Throughout the album, there's a certain emphasis on theatricality, almost as if you're listening to a macabre version of a Broadway show. There are some cheesy moments for sure, but Cooper packs this album with some genuinely off-putting material, from the eerie piano notes of "Stephen" to the monologue at the end of "Devil's Food" done by horror icon Vincent Price.

While some songs may be downtempo, Cooper finds a way to put a more demented spin on those, with "Cold Ethyl" being an ode to necrophilia and "Only Women Bleed" talking about the real life horrors of spousal abuse.

This album might be a more palatable version of Cooper than others, but that doesn't mean that the initial shock value of his music has gone anywhere.