Albums: Alice Cooper - The Revenge of Alice Cooper

Alice Cooper - The Revenge of Alice Cooper

Black Mamba; Wild Ones; Up All Night; Kill the Flies; One Night Stand; Blood on the Sun; Crap That Gets in the Way of Your Dreams; Famous Face; Money Screams; What a Syd; InterGalatic Vagabond Blues; What Happened to You; I Ain’t Done Wrong; See You on the Other Side.
Label:EarMusic

While many of his contemporaries are content to tread the touring circuit based on nostalgia, Alice Cooper has never been one to rest on his laurels. His solo career has kept him firmly in the spotlight. He has now reunited with the original Alice Cooper band to record their first new studio album since 1973’s Muscle of Love. The Revenge of Alice Cooper proves that he and the rest of the band still have the inclination and imagination to come up with a cracking set of new rock songs.

Helping to get the party started is producer Bob Ezrin, who produced the classic School’s Out and Billion Dollar Babies albums, giving this new set of songs a contemporary feel whilst retaining all the elements of a good rock track.⁣

Black Mamba comes like a creepy soundtrack to one of your favourite horror films. Cooper always had a fixation with the macabre side of things, which continues here on this sleazy, slightly blues-infused number, albeit with a nursery rhyme chorus.

Wild Ones follows on an uptempo number that is aptly titled as the fast and furious song that is also raw and raucous as it rides on a killer guitar riff.

Subtlety was never a word that could be applied to the majority of Cooper’s past work as far as the lyrics go. Up All Night and One Night Stand both come with a heavy dose of sexual innuendo, with the title of the former song telling you all you need to know. Can he and the rest of the band get away with it? Of course they can; Cooper is the alter ego of Vincent Furnier, who has been peddling this route successfully for over half a century now.

The latter song, besides coming with more sleaze than a trip through Amsterdam’s red light area, could also be a lost Iggy Pop number. As Cooper confidently whistles away into the distance on the song’s conclusion, the overall effect is still a powerful one.

On Crap That Gets in the Way of Your Dreams, he mistakenly quotes that he is aged 65 years when in fact he is now aged 77 on a song that rattles away against all the wrongs in society, with an influence that comes unbelievably from the Kinks.

I Ain’t Done Wrong continues with the blues theme, leaving See You on the Other Side to close this fine return to form. Hopefully it will still be a while yet before we all meet Alice and the rest of the band on the other side of the gates—be it heaven…or hell!