Alice Cooper, Paranormal, A Review (2017)

Alice Cooper, Paranormal, A Review (2017)

By: Ghost Writer

Rock n Roll Animal

So yes, he's back, the man behind the mask, Vincent Furnier aka Alice Cooper, 70s shock rock legend has finally gathered producer Bob Ezrin back once again into the studio mixing board for a new episode of macabre hard rock storytelling, and although Paranomal might lack the pop polished magic of multi-platinum selling Trash, the relentless bare attack of Brutal Planet, or the epic nightmarish depth of Welcome 2 My Nightmare, you can´t simply deny the solid nature of the record, making hard to not notice how much fun Cooper seems to be having simply rocking with his rock n roll high class friends here, like Deep Purple's Roger Glover on the Love It to Death like title track, as Glover perfectly proportionates his well known  muscular bass playing adding power and glory to the tune dynamic epic flair, which displays some Boston-More Than a Feeling-like guitars, one of the current flaws in Cooper recent records is his heavy leaning on 70s and 80s guitar clichés in order to recreate his classic sound, and when such thing happen is when the whole thing gets a little dated, and the Ezrin job seems to be more about recreating an old classic sound rather taking Cooper into the future.

Dead Flies, the next track is classic hard hitting Cooper with multiple tracked vocals and nasty guitars, flirting a bit with Grand Funk's (another band from Detroit rock city just like Cooper) American Band song, with Fireball as a close second, Cooper finding a great brand of powerful delivered tock along with his band, reaching a peak with the sleazy Paranoiac Personality, and then going into high octane Southern Rock along the legendary Billy Gibbons in guitars on a tune called Fallen in Love that bus definitely a highlight on the record, although derivative, Cooper and his current band manage to deliver an impressive though derivative collection of melodic hard rock, a little bit generative but we must thank the fact that Cooper is not backing up and he is still moving forward, not making music radically transcendental but one that ago a more energy than some of his other contemporary rock n roll friends, with a fast succession of non-exactly catchy but competent tunes like Dynamite Road of Private Public Breakdown, Holy Water or Rats.

But right at the end of Paranormal comes a big surprise and probably the most interesting thing on the whole record and that's the return of Alice Cooper...confused? Well originally the band was called Alice Cooper, before Furnier took the name and made a solo career with that name, so in Genuine American Girl we get the chance of listening to that original band almost coming together again, it might not be on pair with Love It To Death, Killer or Billion Dollar Babies but we can witness that the magic is still there and the song sounds wonderful and catchier than the rest of the record, the other song written and performed by this band is You and All of Your Friends which is way closer to the original output of the band, curiously it sounds a lot to the punk of the Sex Pistols, who were originally inspired in many ways by this version of AC, confirming the myth is still powerful and full of poison, Furnier and the original Alice Cooper band deliver two impressive tracks here that remind us of the original magic and perhaps give us the illusion about what would happen if...could a whole Alice Cooper band record be just around the corner?