Great (and not so great) bands reforming, either in the studio or in the live arena, is something of a trend at the moment. However, who would have thought that the original Alice Cooper band would not only be part of this trend but the creators of one of the best new albums to emerge from it – more than 50 years since their last long-player?
Of course, the name Alice Cooper never actually disappeared and, to most people, it’s the stage name of a charismatic singer who was born Vincent Furnier in Detroit in 1948. However, in the early and mid-1970s, Alice Cooper was a lairy gang of hard-drinking reprobates who made a name for themselves by adding horror tropes and dark humour aplenty to high voltage rock’n’roll songs like “Elected”, “No More Mr Nice Guy” and, of course, the evergreen “School’s Out”. Nevertheless, the man and the band parted ways in 1975 and apart from the occasional, short-lived link-up over the last twenty years, with a gig here and a new song there, that’s how it has stayed. Until now.
The Revenge of Alice Cooper is the first new album involving all the surviving members of the band (guitarist Glen Buxton died in 1997 but even he appears on “What Happened to You”) since 1973’s Muscle of Love. This is no cynical cash-in though. Far from it.
In fact, The Revenge of Alice Cooper is far better than anyone might have dared to expect. From the driving biker rock of “Wild Ones” to the lairy proto-punk of “Crap that Gets in the Way of your Dreams”, the raucous take-down of celebrity culture, “Famous Face”, and the primal rock’n’roll of “I Ain’t Done Wrong”, this is a return that delivers all the way down the line. Without a doubt, it’s an album that would be making waves even without its back story, but when it comes from this band of aging freaks, it really is something special to behold.
