News News
Sep. 2, 2025
ALBUM REVIEW: Alice Cooper – The Revenge of Alice Cooper | Under The Radar
The original Alice Cooper band—Alice on vocals, Glen Buxton and Michael Bruce on lead guitars, Dennis Dunaway on bass, and Neal Smith on drums—broke up in 1974, after the previous year’s Muscle of Love. It was a fruitful partnership, spanning Alice Cooper’s first seven albums and the bulk of his best material. Glen Buxton passed away tragically in 1997, and since then the original band has appeared onstage a handful of times (see the excellent Live from the Astroturf, which features eight songs from the original band performed in 2015). But they haven’t recorded studio material together in over 50 years. Until now.
The Revenge of Alice Cooper is a remarkable achievement and by all accounts a terrific album. The original band is back, with the late Buxton even making a posthumous appearance with a previously unreleased guitar part on “What Happened to You.”
Aside from the opener, “Black Mamba,” a meant-to-be-creepy slow burner reliant on snake metaphor and featuring Robbie Krieger on guitar, which doesn’t exactly hit its mark, the rest of The Revenge of Alice Cooper is exactly what you’d have hoped for from the original band, despite the 50-year time gap between releases. “Wild Ones” is a straight forward rocker. “Blood on the Sun” is wonderfully epic, with a nice extended instrumental outro passage before the reprise of the title chorus. “Kill the Flies” perfects the haunting aura that “Black Mamba” aimed for. “Money Screams” is a first-rate pop song. The aforementioned “What Happened to You?” features some nice ballroom piano. And “See You on the Other Side” closes things out in ballad-esque style that’s, shall we say, even affecting.
Alice Cooper, original band or not, has always walked a line between the creepy and the cartoonish, often unapologetically erring on the side of the latter. And The Revenge of Alice Cooper is no different. In the sexually-innuendoed “Up All Night,” Cooper sings that he can “keep it up all night,” despite the song’s time being set hilariously at a quarter to nine. Elsewhere, he sings lyrics like “You’re as worthless as a dog with fleas,” and the terrific couplet “Was I wasting my life? Were they right all along?/Should I bury my wife or just write another song?”
The Revenge of Alice Cooper is filled with engaging guitar and blistering solos. Alice sounds in good form. Most of these songs fit in perfectly with his larger catalog. And although occasionally things feel like they lean a bit too much toward the cartoonish or heavy with cheese, this has always been Alice Cooper’s way. It’s part of his charm, and there’s no reason to change now. The Revenge of Alice Cooper is an excellent original band comeback. It sounds as if 50 years have disappeared in the blink of an eye.