Step Into My Personoiac Paranality

Alice Cooper isn’t done yet and his latest album Paranormal shows this vaudevillian super villain re-vamped and re-energize. With every song being its own mini episode filled attitude and tongue-in-cheek humor, this record brings Alice back to his garage rock roots.

The two singles off the album (original article here) blend in perfectly with the rest of the track listing and give the record a great flow. The self-titled “Paranormal” proves to be a great opener mixing a theater rock sound in a garage rock song. It’s a wonderful mini rock opera. After you delve into the first few tracks, the second single “Paranoiac Personality” becomes a great rocker with an almost Pink Floyd atmosphere kicking off the mentally damaged train ride. It’s a stellar track that deserves to already be a Cooper classic.

Equally great rockers “Fireball” and “Dead Flies” harken back to the Dirty Diamonds period with their tight guitars, straight forward sound, and fist pumping energy. Other songs like “Rats” and “Holy Water” evoke images of past classic tracks like “Under My Wheels“, “Elected“, and “Some Folks“.

The stand out number would absolutely have to be “The Sound Of A“. This track really brings that iconic Alice back by creating a brooding soundscape accompanied with ominous lyrics. It’s classic Coop. Almost like a 007 horror show.

Honestly, the only points where the record fell short was in some of the lyrics/music and the 2 bonus tracks that he wrote with the original surviving band mates. When it came to the bonus tracks, they were just meh. The humor was kind of dated and they didn’t feel inspiring. They sounded more like uninspired jams than full on songs. As for the lyrics/music, the points where Cooper revisits past song titles, references, and lyrics kind of cheapened the tracks a bit. The return to riffs and signature licks of the past also seemed a bit gimmicky.

After everything is said and done though, Paranormal is a great record with hard hitting songs that are sure to be Alice Cooper classics. I can see future guitar gods sitting down to learn some of these riffs and try to capture the same energy that the album emits. The whole shebang shows the Coop doing what the Coop does best and that is to create a memorable experience that can be passed onto the generations to come. After all, he can still make crowds go wild…