Alice Cooper - The Revenge Of Alice Cooper
★★★
EARMUSIC
Fifty six years on from 1969’s Pretties For You, neither Vincent Damon Furnier or his transgressive, kohl-eyed alter ego seem to have aged proportionately. Even at 77, Alice Cooper’s appetite for his macabre – these days often darkly comic oeuvre – seems close to undiminished. Not every luminary of Cooper’s vintage can match his reserves of vigour and charisma, though, hence this reunion-proper of shock rock’s original motley crew seems a bigger test for bassist Dennis Dunaway (78), rhythm guitarist Michael Bruce (77) and drummer Neal Smith (77).
Together with late lead guitarist Glen Buxton (to whom this album is dedicated) these venerable purveyors of dishevelled garage riffage and don’t-watch-alone theatricality made some of the best hits and hooks-fuelled hard rock of the early ’70s. With Nashville-based new boy Gyasi Hues in the Buxton role, and Bob Ezrin, masterful producer of Killer, School’s Out et al back at the controls, _The Revenge Of Alice Cooper, Alice_says, “feels like the album that should have followed [1973’s] Billion Dollar Babies.”
Processing its uneven, overstuffed tracklisting (14 songs; 16 on the bonus tracks version), it’s hard to concur. Instead, you seize upon occasional glimmers of the old magic. Blood On The Sun’s 12-string acoustic intro, psychedelic undertow and riffy gear shifts impress. Buxton’s posthumous appearance on the raw, Eddie Cochran-esque What Happened To You also shines, but elsewhere things sometimes get formulaic, the horror cod and the guillotine a little blunt. A cover of The Yardbirds’ I Ain’t Done Wrong feels somewhat superfluous, key influence though they were, and these guys can certainly do better than Up All Night’s priapic boasts.
As ever, Cooper brings a slew of vivid characters. In Black Mamba, a slinky jam song with The Doors’ Robby Krieger guesting, he’s the lascivious titular snake, part Kaa from The Jungle Book, part Dick Dastardly. In Kill The Flies, another winner, he’s an asylum patient with pest control issues, and in the daft but decent Intergalactic Vagabond Blues, he’s seduced by a three-eyed alien. The Alice Cooper band ’70s-vintage was scarier, more potent, but their 2025 sound is closer to the more cartoonish vibe of their leader’s late-period solo output.
After their 2011 performance at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and Dunaway, Bruce and Smith guest-spots on such Cooper solo albums as 2017’s Paranormal and 2021’s Detroit Stories, this full-length return is something the Alice Cooper band have been feeling their way towards for years. Rejoice that it’s happened, certainly, but don’t expect too much. School reunions can be disappointing; a bold attempt to re-capture what the intervening years have depleted or erased.
The Revenge Of Alice Cooper is out July 25 on Earmusic.
ORDER: Amazon | Rough Trade | HMV
The Revenge Of Alice Cooper Tracklist:
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
Inter Galactic Vagabond Blues
What Happened To You
I Ain’t Done Wrong
See You On The Other Side
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Photo: Jenny Ritter