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ALICE COOPER: ‘The Revenge of Alice Cooper’

Categories: Album & Live Reviews, Music

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While we all mourn the loss of the now late and always great Ozzy Osbourne, we should also remind ourselves to hold onto and cherish the remaining greats of our beloved Metal and Shock Rock genres.

And there is one individual that is a standout as not just a man of metal and shock rock, but also a great performer in both a musical and theatrical sense. That man is Alice Cooper, and if you have ever seen an Alice Cooper show, you will know exactly what I mean when I say a great performer. His shows are like no other and his array of hits is so vast, you will even hear a few that you never knew were his.

This time around for his new album and for the first time in over 50 years, he is joined by the original Alice Cooper Band for The Revenge of Alice Cooper. This highly anticipated album is heralded as the successor to their iconic records Schools Out (1972), Billion Dollar Babies (1973), Love It to Death (1971), and Killer (1971). Alice, Neal Smith, Michael Bruce, and Dennis Buxton have reunited with their producer Bob Ezrin in an old-school recording studio in Connecticut, rekindling the magic from the 70’s. The album is a celebration of friendship, nostalgia, and the timeless sound that solidified Alice Cooper as a rock icon. Fans can expect a powerful and nostalgic experience that bridges the gap between the band’s storied past and their vibrant present. That is what his publicist tells me anyway, but I will the judge of that, so let us get to it!

The album kicks off with a creepy spoken word intro from Alice, which is backed by some haunting bass and swirling effects. Black Mamba takes its first strides as a blues jam with Alice delivering spoken word style vocals before shifting into a simple sing-along bridge. It is theatrical without the theatrics, if that makes any sense. Like watching a musical, without watching a musical. The track features the legendary Robby Krieger of The Doors on guitar, and you can definitely hear his styling throughout the track.

Next up is Wild Ones, and it shuffles off to a rocking good start. The riffs are rocking, and the drums are thumping in every moment through the track. Alice delivers his vocals with a fiery and venomous attack. It is a Wild One, that’s for sure, and it is hopefully setting a tempo for what to come. It is very shock rock!
I have left this review until the last minute as usual, and if I do not hurry up with it, I am going to be Up All Night. Thankfully, Alice and the crew wrote this song for me to keep me up and burning bright. It sits somewhere halfway between the first two tracks with slightly toned-down rock riffs, but with a slightly darker tone in parts. The vocal delivery is a little lighter and positive than it is shock rock, or theatrical doom.

And now it is time to flip to Side B for Kill the Flies. It is a bouncing good time with a nice killer bass line through it that switches between bopping and rolling. The lyrics tell a story of flies, and Alice’s struggle with them watching him with their fly’s eyes and waiting for him to die. It is creepy in a comical way.

Another awesome bass line guides the rhythm of One Night Stand, which, for some reason, reminds me of some kind of Middle Eastern style song that would play when a Genie exits a bottle. That or a spy theme. Alice’s vocal delivery reminds me somewhat of the styling of Nick Cave. Let us be honest, though, Nick probably “borrowed” a bit of his style from Alice anyway. The song almost collapses on itself in chaos at the end before fading out.

Blood On the Sun drops the tempo back initially and then steps back up as Alice tells the story of a company of heroes at war with guns. The bridge drops into a guitar jam mid-track that just keeps thumping away at you until it crashes to its own doom and the track takes a turn to the dark before reprising to a snare drum line and driving guitars that echo the resonance of a bugle. It eventually develops into a guitar solo and then reaches its peak with Alice joining in for an outro chorus.

It is time to switch vinyls for Side C so that I can check out Crap That Gets in the Way of Your Dreams. This one is a song about Alice getting his first guitar, jamming in a garage, and taking a rip from the bong. It is for all of us failed musicians who just never manage to get it done. Not Alice, he got it done, but that would not make a good song, would it, and it is exactly the kind of crap that gets in the way of your dreams. It is a fun track with a very comical view of a musician’s life.

A few big guitar bends kick off the jams for Famous Face. This is a guitar track with big chords, big riffs, and a solid bass line. Lyrically, it seems to be a song about pretenders in the world of celebrity. Fun track, which I stopped writing just to listen to.

Money Screams gets straight to the point as does Alice with stories about struggles with money and how it does not talk, it screams. Master of Puppets gets a mention too, not the song, the notion, so calm down, Metallica this is not all about you. The whole band sounds like it is having a whole lot of fun with this one, including some do bop bops!

1,2 … 1,2,3 … jazz jam! I was not expecting this, but I like it. I feel like I am sitting in an old school whiskey bar. Ho de ho, ho de hey! I do not really know what more to say about this other than it has shown the musical flexibility of the band. I do not even know what the song titles means, but it is titled What a Syd.

Side D, here with go with the Intergalactic Vagabond Blues. It is exactly what you would expect with a name like that. The Intergalactic part seems to refer to an alien siren of some kind. It is upbeat, it is bluesy, and it is one hell of a good time.

The next track features a posthumous appearance by Glen Buxton, the band’s original guitarist who passed away in 1997, through an unreleased recording that seamlessly blends the past with the present. The track titled What Happened to You is an up-tempo rock track about a girl.

The harmonica seems to make an appearance in I Ain’t Done Wrong, but first it kicks off with a tasty Wah lick. The guitars, drums, and bass stab in and out repetitively as Alice delivers an unusual vocal style over the top for a couple of verses until the song develops into a blues bar jam.

Oh no, it is time for the end of album ballad, but at least the guitars are distorted. It is not that bad really, it is just a bit slower, but Alice’s vocals are husky, raw and full of grit as he tells you he will See You on the Other Side.

There is a limited box set and limited art print (smart format), featuring exclusive access to two bonus tracks from the start, plus the full album automatically delivered as a high-definition download. I am lucky enough to have those two bonus tracks, but you are not lucky enough this time to get a sneak preview review of them from me. You are just going to have to get yourself one of the Boxsets and review them yourself.

There is a reason that Alice Cooper has sold countless millions of records worldwide, shaped rock history forever, and been inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Their music remains as powerful and as relevant as ever with their high-voltage, mischievous, venomous, rebellious, vintage horror and classic ’70s shock rock stylings that capture audiences worldwide. And this album is just one more epic chapter that reclaims the sound and legacy that made them legends to begin with.

THE REVENGE OF ALICE COOPER is out now on the following formats!