01. Black Mamba
02. Wild Ones
03. Up All Night
04. Kill The Flies
05. One Night Stand
06. Blood On The Sun
07. Crap That Gets In The Way Of Your Dreams
08. Famous Face
09. Money Screams
10. What A Syd
11. Inter Galactic Vagabond Blues
12. What Happened To You [feat. Glen Buxton]
13. I Ain't Done Wrong [The Yardbirds cover]
14. See You On The Other Side
15. Return Of The Spiders [2025 version][bonus]
16. Titanic Overunderture [bonus]

Even after a decade’s worth of experiments, this album seemed too much to hope for – but we have in hand the revenge of the original Alice Cooper group, recording a whole LP for the first time since Muscle Of Love, and it’s a sweeter coup than where we left them 52 years ago.

Well, I say “we”, but it’s not like I was there. The universal “we”. Taking that into consideration, I can say that perhaps the rationality of hindsight will permit us to consider Muscle Of Love an underappreciated album, though as a pretty decent album following a string of revolutionary classics, it was a definite low point and a sensible juncture for an exhausted band to hang up its spurs. All the more agreeable considering how Alice the newly christened solo artist subsequently redeployed with Welcome To My Nightmare, but through the snakes and guillotines of his career thereafter, there’s often been a shadow of the group’s early masterpieces, and he’s never been backed by a better band than the originals. It was a delight when in 2011 Welcome 2 My Nightmare pulled Dennis Dunaway, Michael Bruce, and Neal Smith back together with Alice himself for their first-ever studio reunion, yielding some solid tracks on a fun album that still stands out as a career highlight. It was so much fun that it happened a few years later on Paranormal, then again on Detroit Stories, and they even took the show on the road a few times. You could posit that an entire album was an inevitability at that pace, but I prefer not to take this for granted: staring down a 60-year career, you can hardly say that anything is inevitable anymore. And how very rare, how very special it is for a band to reunite for a full album after more than half a century’s delay. We’re a lucky audience indeed.

Now sure, the concept alone is enough to make a superfan swoon, but you’d dearly hope for it to be good so as not to spoil the story. The Revenge Of Alice Cooper isn’t killer, and it certainly isn’t Killer, but it has more life in it than its distant/immediate predecessor. At its best, The Revenge is the first time that Alice Cooper has sounded fully like Alice Cooper in a long, long time. What I found so terribly hard to appreciate about Detroit Stories, Road, and even Paranormal on occasion is that their “return to roots” shtick didn’t feel like a real return to Alice; maybe geographically, in the first case, but that decade of backsliding into lethargic legacy rock cliches felt like a supplication to recycled relics that the old band had been too cutting-edge for. They were overproduced: the thick, slick guitars and gruff backing vocals didn’t really suit Alice, and the heavy polish made the material feel more generic than it had to be. The Revenge puts the band back in touch with the ingenuity and showmanship that they pioneered. It’s not really the “Wild Ones” that I’m after – it’s the weird ones, the off-kilter ones, the out-of-focus ones.

Those softer, less rambunctious numbers are often the strongest, where the horror mood seeps back in, Alice’s dour delivery sounds most comfortable, and the band shows off its cohesion in untrammeled environments. “Black Mamba” sets a strange stage for us: it’s an oddly low-key choice of song for the first single and opening track, forsaking flash for a subdued, psychedelic seduction. But that creepy-crawly slither is totally Alice, and its jammy, dirty groove puts Dunaway’s bass back at the front where he belongs; it might be odd to say this about the lead single, but for me it’s the sleeper hit, the one that slunk right by on introduction and now coils around my brain. “One Night Stand” turns tense and wistful in a compelling piece of gothic new wave that’s more focused and satisfying than Alice’s troubled-era dabbling in the scene; “What A Syd” recalls “Blue Turk” with its macabre swing, and it’s far too short for how much fun it is; the closer, “See You On The Other Side”, is a moving finale, a nostalgic power ballad whose earthy sentimentality reflects on all the years that have passed by and all the friends who have passed on while Alice Cooper keeps rolling into eternity. It’s a magnificent finish tinged with the plaintive simplicity of Pink Floyd. The most exciting cut, however, is “Blood On The Sun”, a multi-phased adventure that feels the most like classic Alice Cooper of any song the band has done together over these last 15 years. This song sounds like it just sprang from the grooves of Love It To Death; its harmonious choruses, dramatic war theme, and extended instrumental sections summon all the fun and musical intrigue that made the old Alice Cooper band so special to begin with.

The Revenge doesn’t consistently represent Alice at peak form – outside those highlights, convention still predominates, and within this realm of basic rock templates that has fueled many an album already, the stable of challenging ideas has dwindled to dregs of simplicity and repetition that don’t suit such a talented and versatile act. “Up All Night” is basically an AC/DC song, and the world already has plenty of those, usually with more shrieking. “Kill The Flies” searches for an idea and circles around some themes that could be interesting, but it never quite breaks its shell. “Wild Ones” is admittedly catchy, and the temptation of its speed and simple hook qualifies it as a technical success as a single, but whenever I actually queue it up I find myself lamenting how stubbornly one-note it is. There are a few other tracks that would have been worth retooling or editing, as this album still lounges too heavily in the classic rock comfort zone I’ve been increasingly disappointed by on the last few albums.

Even so, there are successes in safety: “Crap That Gets In The Way Of Your Dreams” is good bratty fun (“should I bury my wife or just write another song?” is a great line) and “What Happened To You” follows after “Under My Wheels”, going as far as incorporating unreleased guitar solos recorded by Glen Buxton, truly completing the classic lineup for one last time. And even at its least musically interesting, this album still feels more natural for Alice Cooper than the last several. Its production isn’t as harshly medicated, so when I hear the relaxed attitude and smooth instrumental communion of old-timers fitting back into the groove, I can get comfortable knowing that this is Alice Cooper in their element.

With the freedom of a full album to experiment, it’s clear that the band’s greatest successes are when they get the most adventurous, and I hope that the next Alice Cooper album, whether it’s solo or all together, takes lessons from this. Regardless, this album points to a much brighter future than Road did; for one thing, we already know there’s a mandatory sequel in three years, because Alice himself is currently 77 years old and these guys are not allowed to miss the chance to record “I’m Eighty”. They won’t even have to change a lot of the lyrics. And The Revenge Of Alice Cooper tells me that they still have the capacity to pull out a couple of all-timers to buoy a solid album; for the first time in a while I feel that I’m eagerly anticipating the next Alice Cooper album instead of fearing disappointment.

Performance:	8
Songwriting:	7
Originality:	6
Production:	8