While I enjoy nearly everything Alice Cooper – the singer – has done through the years, there is just something special about the recordings he has made with the original Alice Cooper band. Now, this could be a simple matter of youth, but ‘The Revenge of Alice Cooper’ proves beyond a shade of a doubt that in this case, the actual people involved truly are the reason why those early Alice Cooper albums are as good as they are. On the first full-length album with all surviving members of the original Alice Cooper band, all in their late seventies now, the signature sound is there.

Guitarist Michael Bruce, bassist Dennis Dunaway and drummer Neal Smith have been collaborating with Cooper on a few songs on ‘Welcome 2 My Nightmare’ (2011), ‘Paranormal’ (2017) and ‘Detroit Stories’ (2021), and the chemistry was undeniable. A full album could easily be nostalgia bait or something only those involved enjoy, but none of the musicians Cooper worked with through the years capture the Detroit rock ‘n’ roll vibe as well as these people. Also, recordings by guitarist Glen Buxton, who died in 1997 but played with Bruce and Smith shortly prior, appear on the ‘Under My Wheels’-esque ‘What Happened to You’.

Focusing on the band’s strengths, a majority of ‘The Revenge of Alice Cooper’ dabbles in a style typical of late sixties and early seventies Detroit. The riffs are heavier than those of most other rock ‘n’ roll bands at the time, not quite as proto-punk-ish as MC5, but with a similar uncomplicated, contrarian vibe as early punk bands. The back half of the album in particular has a number of songs that feel rooted in lively rock ‘n’ roll jams. ‘Crap that Gets in the Way of your Dreams’ even displays the same cynicism as ‘I’m Eighteen’ for a different phase of life.

One thing these guys have gotten considerably better at through the years are the nuances necessary to make the darker tracks work. The laid-back playing that makes ‘Black Mamba’ so ominous is the result of experience. The atmosphere is somewhat reminiscent of The Doors, whose guitarist Robby Krieger guests on the song. The fantastic epic ‘Blood on the Sun’ is another one I’m not sure they would be able to make as youngsters. Other highlights include the beautifully melancholic rocker ‘Wild Ones’, the heavy grind of ‘Up All Night’, the slinky grooves of ‘One Night Stand’, and the deeply earnest Buxton tribute that is closing ballad ‘See You on the Other Side’.

Producer Bob Ezrin is another key ingredient of why ‘The Revenge of Alice Cooper’ is this good. He co-wrote many of the songs, and likely is the one who made the album sound like it could have been recorded during the band’s original run, with a nice, natural drum sound for Smith. I also suspect he had a hand in turning jams into songs, like he used to in the seventies. Cooper himself, meanwhile, still sounds every bit as convinging at age 77 as he did when he was younger. Granted, he never had the most conventionally beautiful singing voice, but it continues to blow my mind that he never lost his power.

So is ‘The Revenge of Alice Cooper’ the best Alice Cooper album since the original band split up in the mid-seventies? I would say so. There is an argument to be made for ‘Welcome to My Nightmare’ (1975) or ‘Brutal Planet‘ (2000), but the magic of the original band is here in spades. Personally, I would have cut one or two songs near the end in order to maximize the album’s impact, but there is no doubt in my mind that this is Alice Cooper as I would like to hear them.

Recommended tracks: ‘Wild Ones’, ‘Blood on the Sun’, ‘Up All Night’