With his career spanning five decades and a six year wait since the last album, is Alice Cooper’s latest work up to the standard that he has set over the years?
Credited with effectively creating shock rock and bringing horror imagery into the rock world, Alice Cooper has created quite the legacy. After 26 albums, multiple massive commercial hits and even forays into golf, radio and restaurants, Cooper is experienced if nothing else. However, after a six year break and nearly at 70, has he still got it?
Paranormal is both the opening and title track, and softly, softly are we brought back into the realm of Cooper. Plucked guitar shot through with power chords and wailing notes. As the vocals roll on in, Alice Cooper shows a voice that in no way belies his 69 years. That said, the song is a little disjointed, and almost feels like a warm up with its sudden solo breaks and pace changes.
Thankfully it seems just that. The album leaps into Dead Flies, a gravelly, bluesy track led by Cooper’s rasping vocals. With a pounding drumline, loaded with fills and a driven, pacing guitar and bassline, the track is a welcome return to form. In the rockier, (slightly) less theatrical vein alongside Dead Flies, is Paranoiac Personality. The same blues-led rock n roll vibe is present here too, as well as in Fallen in Love, with the same glam feel to the guitar, relaxed yet precise drum beat and thumping bassline. Cooper still throws in a few ‘Psycho’ style strings and his signature swaggering vocals, but it’s a real show of variety from his well-known material such as Poison. In the latter of the two tracks, there’s every chance Cooper is happy to poke fun at his own age with lyrics such as ‘Well I used to be a stud, but now I’ve fallen in love, and I can’t get up’.
Paranormal is Alice Cooper’s 27th studio album.
Not content here, the album jumps gear again, to Fireball. The Gothic atmosphere from the Godfather of Shock Rock returns with strings and synth layered with a subtlety that lends itself to art into the rear of the track whilst the drums and eerie, menacing guitar take the foreground alongside Cooper’s vocals. For this reviewer, I’m happily thrown back to hearing Cooper for the first time before I’d even hit double digits and being fascinated with a sound that wasn’t primary-school friendly pop. The Sound Of A, much later in the album keeps the same dark and mysterious feel to itself, making it easy to imagine the band back on stage with smokes, snakes and maybe even an electric chair for good measure.
In Dynamite Road, the theatrics allow for Cooper’s lyrics and vocals to really leap into the fore. The galloping drum beat powers the song along as we hear the story of Cooper riding in an evil limo that’s being driven by the Devil and loaded with gorgeous women, in standard Cooper fashion though, he’s more worried about what the devil did to his own car than meeting Satan himself. Although the subject matter is an antithesis to the former track, Holy Water keeps the same blues-led theatrics, complete with backing brass, to show off even more of Cooper’s repertoire, and spanning five decades, he doesn’t disappoint.
Tucked away near the end (loaded with live tracks, but more on that later), are two tracks featuring the original line-up, Genuine American Girl, You and All of Your Friends. To say both are good is a wild understatement. If you’re looking for a throwback to the band’s previous work, or simply an awesome duo of songs for a newcomer to Cooper, you’ve found them. Rasping vocals collide with doo-wop backing vocals and guitar leaps from rhythmic to solo in an instant in Genuine American Girl making for a fascinating glam-cum-Southern rock feel. In You and All Your Friends, we’re given a rock anthem adage to School’s Out. It’s unapologetically glam and theatrical and simply sounds like decades of work paying off in the space of just under three minutes.
With a massively strong track list and even six live tracks of ‘the hits’ such as No More Mr. Nice Guy, School’s Out and Feed My Frankenstein from a Columbus gig the album is a heavyweight contender. The live tracks even manage to capture some of the theatrics you’d expect from a gig with the man himself.
To try and capture the spirit of the album, why not drop into Richer Sounds to find a system that can handle the album?
Author: Steve, Southgate Store
