Alice Cooper
Paranormal
earMusic
2017
Whether you choose to believe it or not, “Paranormal” is Alice Cooper’s 27th(!) studio album. Alice Cooper (born Vincent Damon Furnier almost seven decades ago) has enjoyed an illustrious career that has spanned nearly the five of those decades of his adult life… coming off the heels of a rather anti-climactic sequel to his “Nightmare” half a dozen years ago, “Paranormal” at least feels more like a proper Alice Cooper album, rather than an experiment that didn’t quite pan out.
“Paranormal” is a very atmospheric song and introduces the listener to this newest “nightmare”… It features one Roger Glover from Deep Purple, who quite willfully nods along...
“Dead Flies” is a sardonic rock n roller number that might be “simple” in its concept, but works fairly nicely…
“Fireball” is a fuzzy rocker, with a thick riff, reminiscent of BOC, but the phased out overdriven vocal makes it a little tedious to be quite frank.
I didn’t quite like “Paranoiac Personality” as a single, but in the context of the album, this other poignantly ironic piec, just falls nicely into place...
“Fallen in Love” has Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top on it and you can tell, but the way it sounds… it’s not reinventing the wheel but it’s no dud either. No matter what, it’s quite funny to hear Coop name-checking some of his previous works in the lyrics in it.
“Dynamite Road” with its stomping and infectious rhythm is really a relative highlight… but something I did notice is that a lot of the songs on the album seem to work best in the sequence they are in and would have a hard time standing on their lonesome… this “cautionary tale” has the devil wrecking on of AC’s fav Cadillacs, so beware who you give your keys to...
“Private Public Breakdown” is probably the closer we get to a filler, but since it’s not too long it doesn’t cause much grief...
“Holy Water” complete with horn sounds, feels almost as if it were a musical number, which doesn’t exactly come as a surprise and feels like an improvement after “Breakdown”… but not by a whole lot.
“Rats” is a s-punky rock n roller that picks up any “slack” that the “slower” or more eclectic numbers might have used with its high energy.
Last on the album comes “The Sound of A”, a rather melancholic closer to the album, but one that feels weirdly appropriate.
On the second disk (deluxe edition) we find two new studio recordings with the original Alice Cooper band, in fact the first time these “guys” have worked together since the 70s namely “Genuine American Girl” is a doo-wap that feels as if it could have been conceived back in the day but even more so “You and All of Your Friends” feels a lot more like something that in fact could have been found in one of those vintage albums…
To round of the proceedings a further six classic tracks are offered, recorded live in Columbus, Ohio, on May 6th, 2016 with the current Alice Cooper band; they actually sound pretty good and well mixed… these are “No More Mr. Nice Guy”, “Under My Wheels”, “Billion Dollar Babies”, “Feed My Frankenstein”, “Only Women Bleed” and “School’s Out” a mini-dose of a full AC show, I guess. All in all, worth getting and not even by fans alone… Oh, Mr. Cooper…
“Paranormal” is a very atmospheric song and introduces the listener to this newest “nightmare”… It features one Roger Glover from Deep Purple, who quite willfully nods along...
“Dead Flies” is a sardonic rock n roller number that might be “simple” in its concept, but works fairly nicely…
“Fireball” is a fuzzy rocker, with a thick riff, reminiscent of BOC, but the phased out overdriven vocal makes it a little tedious to be quite frank.
I didn’t quite like “Paranoiac Personality” as a single, but in the context of the album, this other poignantly ironic piec, just falls nicely into place...
“Fallen in Love” has Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top on it and you can tell, but the way it sounds… it’s not reinventing the wheel but it’s no dud either. No matter what, it’s quite funny to hear Coop name-checking some of his previous works in the lyrics in it.
“Dynamite Road” with its stomping and infectious rhythm is really a relative highlight… but something I did notice is that a lot of the songs on the album seem to work best in the sequence they are in and would have a hard time standing on their lonesome… this “cautionary tale” has the devil wrecking on of AC’s fav Cadillacs, so beware who you give your keys to...
“Private Public Breakdown” is probably the closer we get to a filler, but since it’s not too long it doesn’t cause much grief...
“Holy Water” complete with horn sounds, feels almost as if it were a musical number, which doesn’t exactly come as a surprise and feels like an improvement after “Breakdown”… but not by a whole lot.
“Rats” is a s-punky rock n roller that picks up any “slack” that the “slower” or more eclectic numbers might have used with its high energy.
Last on the album comes “The Sound of A”, a rather melancholic closer to the album, but one that feels weirdly appropriate.
On the second disk (deluxe edition) we find two new studio recordings with the original Alice Cooper band, in fact the first time these “guys” have worked together since the 70s namely “Genuine American Girl” is a doo-wap that feels as if it could have been conceived back in the day but even more so “You and All of Your Friends” feels a lot more like something that in fact could have been found in one of those vintage albums…
To round of the proceedings a further six classic tracks are offered, recorded live in Columbus, Ohio, on May 6th, 2016 with the current Alice Cooper band; they actually sound pretty good and well mixed… these are “No More Mr. Nice Guy”, “Under My Wheels”, “Billion Dollar Babies”, “Feed My Frankenstein”, “Only Women Bleed” and “School’s Out” a mini-dose of a full AC show, I guess. All in all, worth getting and not even by fans alone… Oh, Mr. Cooper…