"Black Mamba" First Listen: Alice Cooper Group Reunites After 5 Decades
"The Revenge of Alice Cooper" to drop in July. Stream counts & time will tell if the planet will respond with "The Revenge of The Listening Public"! Can an "I'm Seventy-Seven" single be far behind?👴
According to Loudwire, The Revenge of Alice Cooper, the eighth studio album by Alice Cooper (and his original Band) will be released on July 25, 2025 by earMusic Records, a multi-national concern with distribution through something called The Orchard, and, finally, through the erstwhile CBS….Sony.
It will be the group’s first collaboration since 1973’s Muscle of Love, and the 30th Alice Cooper studio album overall (including his 22 solo albums). For the uninitiated, prior to 1975 or so, “Alice Cooper” was the name of the band, and not so much the name of the guy whelped by Mrs. Furnier in a Detroit hospital in 1948, and named Vincent; Vince morphing into Alice was more of a media thing that would come around more so in the mid-’70s.
By the way, if you’ve lost track of the Coop’s progeny (with wife, Sheryl), it seems he’s the father of one Calico Cooper (actress and singer born in 1981; she’s been working with dad onstage since 2000), lead singer for rockers, CO-OP, Dash Cooper (born 1985), and Sonora Rose Cooper, born in 1993.
The new single dropped April 22; it also will lead off the new album. “Black Mamba” was written by Alice, guitarist Michael Bruce, and longtime Coop producer, Bob Ezrin, who produced The Revenge album. If the original early-’70s group is re-connecting, it only makes sonic sense to bring back the one who crafted the classic recorded sound that many who followed tried to replicate.
What Got Us “Hear”
Beginning with the band’s third album in 1971, Love It to Death, Ezrin began shaping and focusing a sound that had previously meandered around a sound soup of psychedelic and acid rock for the previous two albums (Pretties For You and Easy Action, both shown below).
For example, Pretties For You had far too many hands in the booth broth in 1969. The band had just signed to Frank Zappa’s new Warner Bros. affiliate, Straight Records (Frank also had his Bizarre label under the WB shield at the time). The Alice Cooper Group was given credit for all the material, as well as the album’s production (uncredited producer included Frank’s Mothers of Invention player, Ian Underwood).
“Reflected” will give you an idea of the amateurish cacophony that resulted, plus, you’ll hear echoes of the band’s “Elected,” effectively repurposed in 1973 as the Ezrin-produced hit that emerged from the band’s Billion Dollar Babies album! In a 2017 Marc Maron podcast, Alice revealed that Joey Ramone once told him that The Ramones’ “I Wanna Be Sedated,” in 1978, was influenced by “Elected.”
It didn’t help Cooper and Band (in the U.S., anyway) that the front cover of Pretties had a painting of a woman lifting her skirt, showing off her panties. This required the parent Warner Bros. to slap a small, rectangular yellow sticker over the offending frillies, so retail display wouldn’t be hindered. FM radio play was sporadic and spurred mostly by curiosities, and AM play was simply out of the question.
I'm happy to see the original members recording new material with Ezrin, but as someone else says here, I'm a little scared to hear it. . . I generally feel that "you can't go home again" with stuff like this. On the other hand, at least they're not just re-hashing old hits and I support that whole-heartedly!
I've never been a big fan of Alice as a solo artist (though I respect him as a person from what I know), but the original AC Band was amazing, and I rate "Killer" and "School's Out" as two of my all-time favorite albums. While the band was great, producer Bob Ezrin's contributions cannot be underestimated - he was to Alice Cooper (the band) what George Martin was to The Beatles - a full-fledged creative collaborator.
My vinyl copies of those 2 LPs, by the way, are both mint white-label promos, and "School's Out" has both the banned panties and the report card. Two of the rarer and most cherished LPs in my collection.
It's pretty good..and it's amazing to see them making new music. I've always been a COOPER fan. Actually talked to Michael Bruce a few times, and he's a super nice person.