Label: earMUSIC
Release date: August 25, 2023
Production: Bob Ezrin
Album length: 47:43 min
Genre: Hard Rock / Shock Rock
Rating: 8.5/10
The king of shock rock Alice Cooper is back with a new studio album, “Road”, which is reason enough to throw a hard rock party, because whenever Alice drops new music, he rarely lets his followers down. “Road” is his twenty-second studio effort as a solo artist and his twenty-ninth if you also count the albums he made back when the band itself went by the name Alice Cooper.
For the occasion he joined forces with the legendary producer Bob Ezrin, who he’s worked with, on and off, since 1971, which means the production on “Road” is top-notch. Ezrin also pitched in on the album as a backing vocalist and occasional instrumentalist. “Road”, the follow-up to the commercially very successful “Detroit Stories” (2021), on which Alice partly revisited his musical roots, is a full-blooded shock rock record in the best tradition of the master of shock, horror, creepy absurdity and black humor. The lyrics are never short on that last ingredient, and Alice has already confirmed that it’s a concept album about the mishaps, excesses and adventures a famous rock band can run into on a concert tour, as it moves along the road from one town to the next. And the “Road” cover naturally features Alice’s favorite animal – the spider.
While recording “Road”, Alice reportedly wanted to capture as authentic a ‘live band’ sound as possible, so he steered clear of any re-recording or overdubbing of the recorded material. The end result paid off handsomely, and as usual, Alice’s band is at its strongest in the vocal harmonies and the lightning-fast guitar runs from three excellent guitarists, led by the lovely virtuoso Nita Strauss, who has also been making a name for herself as a successful solo artist in recent years.
“Road” opens with the tongue-in-cheek, half-autobiographical “I’m Alice”, which could have been made in any of his ‘classic’ eras, meaning it’ll please longtime fans right away. “Welcome to the Show”, with its bouncy rhythm from the duo of drummer Glen Sobel and bassist Chuck Garric, is the embodiment of a proper shock rock party, with no unexpected ‘epic-length’ complications. The humorous approach in the lyrics continues on “All Over the World”, which has quite a few hefty lines at the expense of the band’s lifestyle while traveling the globe, while Alice returns to his favorite (horror) themes on the somewhat darker and punchier “Dead Don’t Dance”, which features a special guest in a former member, guitarist Kane Roberts, who once played on some of Alice’s most successful albums.
The dirty, tickling “Go Away” is ruled by gritty, bluesy guitar phrases and ‘rodeo’ rhythms. “White Line Frankenstein” is a kind of modern, cocaine-tinged sequel to “Feed My Frankenstein”, the classic from “Hey Stoopid” (1991), in which Alice, a big fighter against all forms of addiction thanks to his own successfully won battle with alcoholism, pays a visit to a modern Frankenstein hooked on white lines, who has apparently ended up as sadly as Bowie’s Major Tom in “Ashes to Ashes”. One of the most fun tracks on “Road” features Tom Morello (Rage Against the Machine, Audioslave) as a special guest on guitar and backing vocals.
In the contest for mixing black humor and bathroom humor in the lyrics of “Road”, with just one letter in the title and chorus standing between Alice and getting lynched by some American feminist movement, the politically incorrect “Big Boots” probably takes the win. It’s about the traveling band’s encounter with a richly endowed waitress who, it turns out, doesn’t have big boots but big… Well, don’t let anyone tell you Alice didn’t learn plenty in this department from his early mentor and producer Frank Zappa, who wouldn’t have self-censored the lyrics and title of this one at all. On ”Rules of the Road”, Alice gets especially biting about touring and all the ‘rules’ on how a rock star should stack up as much money as possible before dying at the tender age of 27.
Thanks to its sharpened guitar runs, the relatively punchy “The Big Goodbye” is the closest thing on “Road” to classic heavy metal, even though at its core it’s still the unmistakable Alice shock rocker/hard rocker, which means fans of ‘heavier’ sounds won’t be left short while listening to the new album. “Road Rats Forever”, with Alice’s Hollywood Vampires buddy Burleigh Johnson on piano, has a few short but sweet solo exchanges between the three guitarists. Alice wouldn’t be Alice if he didn’t cook up at least one ballad for a new album. This time it’s “Baby Please Don’t Go”, which turns out very well, with longtime Deep Purple bassist Roger Glover lending a hand on the bass lines.
Alice gets properly serious on the dark “100 More Miles” too, where his vocal deliberately sounds tired and worn out, in sync with the lyrics about the ‘never-ending’ tour. It’s no secret that Alice counts The Who among his biggest musical influences and favorite bands. So it’s no surprise he closed “Road” with a cover of The Who standard “Magic Bus”, where the excellent backing vocal harmonies really stand out.
“Road” of course doesn’t belong at the very top of Alice’s achievements, which are mostly occupied by his albums from the seventies and the second half of the eighties, but it still ranks among his very good and entertaining records. It ranks especially high compared to the music he’s made over the last twenty years. The main strength and distinguishing feature of “Road” is its clever concept and generous dose of humor. Alice hasn’t been this satirical, teasing, biting, self-ironic and goofy at the expense of the typical rock star’s life in a long time, which is definitely commendable, since not many of his peers could pull off this level of self-irony.
The master of shock rock, who decided long ago to refrain from any politically, religiously or socially sensitive public commentary, because he didn’t want to be misinterpreted or attacked from either of the (artificially) divided, extreme political poles of American society, kicked up quite a storm shortly after the release of “Road”, when he dared to make a fairly innocent remark about the ‘trans’ scene, increasingly influential in modern American society, for which he was promptly punished by his face-makeup supplier.
Author: Peter “Dr. ProgRock” Podbrežnik
Track list:
1. I’m Alice
2. Welcome To The Show
3. All Over The World
4. Dead Don’t Dance
5. Go Away
6. White Line Frankenstein
7. Big Boots
8. Rules Of The Road
9. The Big Goodbye
10. Road Rats Forever
11. Baby Please Don’t Go
12. 100 More Miles
13. Magic Bus
Lineup:
Alice Cooper – vocals, backing vocals (5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13)
Ryan Roxie – electric guitar, acoustic guitar (11, 13), backing vocals (13)
Nita Strauss – electric guitar, acoustic guitar (11), backing vocals (13)
Tommy Henriksen – electric guitar, acoustic guitar (11, 13), keyboards (1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 11, 12), piano (7), bass guitar (7, 11), percussion (1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13), backing vocals (1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13), “Party Animal” (8)
Chuck Garric – bass guitar (all tracks except no. 11), backing vocals (13)
Glen Sobel – drums
Bob Ezrin – backing vocals (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11), acoustic guitar (11), synthesizer (12)
Kane Roberts – guitar (4)
Tom Morello – guitar (6), backing vocals (6)
Burleigh Johnson – piano (10)
Keith Miller – acoustic guitar (11)
Roger Glover – bass guitar (11)
Sheryl Cooper – backing vocals (8)
