Preamble

First, I have never written a preamble to a record review before. But I felt for this LP, I needed to do so.

In old age and retirement, you tend to no longer care about the things that were once important to you when you were younger and a part of the workforce. The longer you’re retired, the less you care to pay attention anymore to such things in life.

While I had heard that my third favorite band, the long-gone Alice Cooper group, might reunite and record a new studio album, of course I was overjoyed to hear this wonderful news, yet I won’t totally believe such talk until I actually saw its release. Only problem was, being out of the loop got in my way, and I missed the release of this new album. So, this wonderfully new comeback album - The Revenge of Alice Cooper, was not only recorded, but released and the band’s old fans were all delighted and excited to hear this - before I knew the LP was even made and finished!

Well, I’m not gonna apologize for being out of the work loop, but man, being so made me miss out on the excitement and release of this great new album by a favorite band of mind, and to that I say shame on me for that! I’m not supposed to be retired from entertainment and the joys found in life, if anything, you retire to get more of that in your final years.

So, when I got my hands on this album in late 2025, the question was, should I review the album? I have reviewed hundreds of albums in my lifetime, both online and in newspapers, but I stopped doing that several years ago when I retired, with one exception. I reviewed the Stones new LP Hackney Diamonds online when it was released. If I could do it for the Stones new LP, well damn it, I, like all the other diehard AC fans who waited over 50 years for a new record, I could temporarily come out of retirement again and write up a review for this great and classic album – which it is! So here I go…..

The Revenge of Alice Cooper. The only thing I don’t care for is the album’s name. But damn, did the old Alice Cooper group put out yet another masterpiece! No, I may not have rated it as high as their 3 best albums, but an overall 8.2 rating on my album rating scale is still a masterpiece!

While I’m not gonna go over every song on this double album (my ratings above for each song tell you how I feel about all of them), I’ll just note the ones that I feel like talking about. I’ll start off with the opening cut, “Black Mamba”. I had, as usual for when I’m writing an album review, rated the songs first, then I write up the review. Last night, my grown grandson Colt, saw my ratings for this LP as I was setting up the new page online for it. He’s a big AC fan and saw what he felt was a low rating for what is one of his favorite songs on the album. “Gramps, what’s wrong with you, why so low a ratting for that great song!” Well, it’s not a low rating at all, heck, it’s a great kickoff song for the album and my 7^th highest rating out of the 14 tracks! Yes, maybe this one would have been a better fit for Alice Cooper’s first solo LP perhaps. But I’ll note, Alice’s vocals on here – and the entire LP, are tops indeed, he still has it vocal wise, not bad for an old guy around my age!

“Wild Ones” follows next on the album and it’s my third favorite tune on here. Written about the old 1953 Marlon Brando biker movie of the same name, this one sounds exactly like the old AC band back in their prime!

Okay, let me move to a song that doesn’t totally grab me music wise, but the lyrics are totally unlike what you find in your normal written song, in a way only a member of Alice Cooper could write it. “Blood on the Sun” which was written by bassist Dennis Dunaway, has every lyric in the song derived from movie film titles! Yes, a theatrical track written in a way no theatrical track was ever written before.

Let me now write about the band’s late lead guitarist, Glen Buxton. Glen passed away back in October of 1997. Besides being one great lead guitar player, he was kinda like the Syd Barrett, or the Brian Jones of Alice Cooper. In time he became a lost soul in the group, and sadly, in life too. He pretty much missed out on playing on the band’s last LP, Muscle of Love, but the band members, like Pink Floyd before them with Syd (and sadly, unlike the Stones with Brian), didn’t forget their lost bandmate. Not only does lost guitar tracks from Glen show up on this album, the LP is dedicated to him and 2 of the songs on here are written about him (the best two songs on the LP, to my ears). The first one being “What a Syd”, a term that Glen used a lot to describe people he didn’t care for, but here it’s being used in an opposite way by the band who loved him. What a fantastic number this one is, with ACG sounding like them old selves here music wise. The lyrics describe Glen in a way only his close friends could: “I'm high all night and I sleep all day, I'll smoke and drink all my cares away, I got no reason and I got no plans, no expectations of the promised land”. Alice noted that this one was written by he and Dennis several years ago for a benefit concert for lost rockers, and this was their salute to their lost buddy, and let me tell ya, Glen would have loved this track! The second tune about him on here, is more somber indeed, more in the traditional role of writing a song about a lost friend, “See You on the Other Side”. This one comes from the heart indeed, about the hereafter, and Alice believes in life after death for sure, and talks about joining his friend in rock ‘n roll heaven in the ditty: “I'll see you on the other side… I'm gonna be with you on the other side. We'll rock and roll the night away, see you there”. I myself may not believe in or worry about life after death, but this song brings a tear to my eye for sure. There’s no harm dreaming that we’ll see our loved ones after we pass, and damn, if there was a rock ‘n roll heaven, I’d be in the front row someday, taking in the show, for sure!

“What Happened to You” is one of the songs that features the entire original AC band playing, and credits the entire band with writing it. It was started years ago, after ACG had broken up, with Glen and Dennis jamming together one night and recording what they were playing. After Glen left us, Dennis was still holding on to this tape, waiting for the day to come when the surviving band members would record an album together again. It’s one of the better songs found on this reunion LP and great to hear Glen’s guitar riffing away once again for a final time.

Is Michael Bruce singing the lead on his song “Famous Face”? This one was first recorded with his post AC band, The Michael Bruce Group, and many fans of the band claim that’s him singing at least co-lead on this one. But the album credits don’t note this to be so. Yet as many of us know, song credits shown on album covers are not always correct. I got a feeling that’s the case here. Parts of the recording sessions came from the first take of the song that Michael made with his new band, and I believe his lead vocals are what we are hearing along with Alice’s lead vocals that you can hear, too.

In a nutshell, this reunion album, their first release in 51 years, hit a grand slam! It didn’t have to be better than Killer or Billion Dollar Babies to do so, and it’s still a masterpiece regardless if not their best ever work. Before I close this out, I heard one review online the other day where the dude notes that they should have played modern day rock music on this album instead of going back to the old ’70s sound. What the fuck!? You got to be kidding – this is the real sound of the Alice Cooper Group, damn it, and for me anyway, no other sound is needed! This is exactly what they should have played today and that’s why the sound is just as great as it sounded back in the 1970s! Anything else won’t be the old ACG, and this is what their old fans wanted to hear!

Keno, February, 2026