Alice Cooper

If you grow up in the 1980s, when Alice Cooper was just some wrinkly has-been surrounded by body-building lunkheads, Killer will make you realize that A.C. (the group) are the common link between punk, glam, heavy metal and all that hair stuff: Hanoi Rocks, Ratt, etc. Man, this record explodes with perfect rock jammers. "Be My Lover" sounds great in the car, "Dead Babies" makes perfect sense in a dimly lit basement and "Under My Wheels" will help you conquer the solar system -- maybe even the galaxy.

Like all the true rock superstars to rise in the Sixties, Alice Cooper is a consummate master
of imagemanipulation. He continually sees to it that new configurations are born in his
studiedly outrageous stage persona and the spirit-force of his sound, with the end in mind
of putting both himself and his audience through a steeplechase of changes and keeping
everybody alert at gut-level. Whether the myth has much at all to do with Alice... More >

A taste for the base usages of hard rock rarely comes with a hit attached these days, much less "surreal," "theatrical," and let us not forget "transvestite" trappings, which is why some desperate rock and rollers have convinced themselves their prayers are being answered. But while this is the band's most song-oriented LP, it falters after "Under My Wheels" and "Be My Lover," neither of them an "I'm Eighteen" in the human outreach department. And only one of the three "theatrical" extravaganzas, "Dead Babies," works on record (never mind in the theatre). (Grade: B-)