Alice Cooper Killer

Alice Cooper is expected to release a double live album this year. Details of the 18-track title appeared online before an official announcement was made. A Paranormal Evening at the Olympia Paris was recorded on Dec. 7 last year, during Cooper's Paranormal tour and was mixed by his longtime collaborator Bob Ezrin.

School's Out catapulted Alice Cooper into the hard rock stratosphere, largely due to its timeless, all-time classic title track. But while the song became Alice's highest-charting single ever (reaching number seven on the U.S. charts) and recalled the brash, three-and-a-half-minute garage rock of yore, the majority of the album signaled a more complex compositional directional for the band. Unlike Cooper's previous releases (Love It to Death, Killer), which contained several instantly identifiable hard rock classics, School's Out appears to be a concept album, and aside from the aforementioned title track anthem, few of the other tracks have ever popped up in concert.

At a time when many of the forgotten bands of the '70s began to resurface, Alice Cooper released Constrictor in 1986, his first album in three years. The album attempts a fresh start, which made sense, since Cooper suffered physically, creatively, and commercially over the past decade due to changing trends and alcoholism, which left his latest releases void of the energy that had made Killer and Welcome to My Nightmare so popular. For the most part, Cooper succeeded in re-establishing himself – this is arguably some of the best work he put forth in years. Nothing comes close to the songs he recorded in his '70s heyday, but what's here is surprisingly lively and sharp-witted: "Simple Disobedience" is a catchy anthem of rebellion, and "Teenage Frankenstein" is a straightforward, amusingly melodramatic rocker.