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The first you hear when you put on the album and play it is something I would call oriental scales. It’s something you can’t put together with the original Alice Cooper Band sound or with one of its original members. It’s not a bad thing, quite the opposite in fact, but nothing to be expected at all. Soon you are totally in unison with the music and there’s a lot of interesting listening. It’s music that you don’t get tire of and that stays fresh for a long long time!

The first few songs are pretty rough sounding. It’s heavy music but it never passes the line of being Metal, in any form. It’s rather nicely produced and it sounds really good sound wise. The oriental scales fits the music very well and It’s obvious that Dennis Dunaway has been a driving force with the composing, there is lots of interesting bass progressions and there’s nothing strange about that. I think you tend to write music with your main instrument in focus, just listen to Queens Another One Bites the Dust, where it’s obvious that John Deacon is the composer! If you compare with other songs by Queen were Freddie Mercury or Brian May is the composer you’ll hear a big difference in approach.

But the bass guitar emphasis doesn’t follow the album sound all the way – fortunately. It sounds quite different even in the second song and it sound even better actually! The retro sound it more prominent and it’s obvious that Dennis Dunaway wasn’t “just” the bass player in the original Alice Cooper Band. He was influential when it came to songwriting as well, he was part of creating some of the very best songs from that classical era. The sound then jump back and forth between “modern” and the retro sound and I guess you could say it’s kind of eclectic in that manner. I think it’s a good thing and what I really want to point on is the versatility of the music and the album as a whole!

The album has a pretty high average, the best songs are really great and the lesser great songs are not bad either, just not masterpieces. The quality of the songs are quite high in despite the styles are so different is what I mean to say. It keeps the music dynamic and not static which is a big danger with albums where the songs are great but too similar to each other. This sound fresh even if you listen to it man many times!

But I won’t deny that it is the retro sounding songs that attracts me the most. They could easily have been part of Love it to Death, Killer or Billion Dollar Babies which is the albums I like the most with the old Alice Cooper Band and if you like the band I almost dare to promise that you’ll love parts of this album too. It’s the first few songs in particular. Me and My Boys smells like rough rock from the seventies and Man is a Beast and Red Room, where Dennis Dunaway sings lead, is nicely dopy. And either of those or perhaps Little Kid (With a Big, Big Gun) could all be the best song of the album!

I’m happy that I got the opportunity to experience this album, it was a very entertaining treat and I will definitely keep my eyes open for other projects with Dennis Dunaway in the future.

20100202 - Tommy Söderberg