I had my period with Alice Cooper. When I was 10 years old, I thought he was the coolest guy in music, and I once saw him behead himself on stage. It warped my little mind, and I loved grooving to albums like Trash, School’s Out, and Welcome to My Nightmare. I remember learning the guitar chords for “Billion Dollar Babies.”
That was more than 20 or so years back, but here we are and Alice Cooper and his original band: reunited with former band members Michael Bruce, Dennis Dunaway, and Neal Smith for the first time in 51 years to release The Revenge of Alice Cooper. While there’s undeniable craftsmanship in this reunion effort, the album suffers from an overwhelming sense that it’s playing dress-up in its own past rather than forging any meaningful path forward. But therein lies the problem: this isn’t 1973, and rock music has evolved in ways that “The Revenge of Alice Cooper” seems willfully ignorant of.
This album sounds like it was released right next to Muscle of Love, and while it did tickle my nostalgia bone, there is absolutely nothing new here. Alice sounds like Alice, mixed with some more vocal processing, and the band is doing some classic hard rock that doesn’t really sound fresh. The lyrics are nothing special. “Kill the Flies” sounds like a deep cut from Welcome to My Nightmare.
Amazingly, Alice Cooper and his band are still at it, but where contemporary artists like Nick Cave or even fellow shock-rock veterans have found ways to age gracefully while maintaining their edge, Cooper’s reunion feels content to simply rewind the clock and hope that muscle memory can substitute for genuine inspiration.
