It's hard not to feel for Alice in Chains - all the guys in the band were lifers, all except lead singer Layne Staley, who never managed to exorcise his demons, succumbing to drug addiction in 2002. Alice in Chains stopped being a going concern long before that, all due to Staley's addictions, and it took guitarist Jerry Cantrell, bassist Mike Inez, and drummer Sean Kinney a long time to decide to regroup, finally hiring William DuVall as Staley's replacement and delivering Black Gives Way to Blue a full 14 years after the band's last album. To everybody's credit, Black Gives Way to Blue sounds like it could have been delivered a year after Alice in Chains: it's unconcerned with fashion; it's true to their dark, churning gloom rock; and if you're not paying attention too closely, it's easy to mistake DuVall for his predecessor…
The road will make you or break you. To survive it, you need to be as tough as asphalt and move fast enough to make the competition eat dust. Throughout 2022, Alice collaborated closely with the members of his touring band as well as long-time producer Bob Ezrin, putting together what would become his brand-new studio album “Road.” You can feel the energy and lightness that the band brings with every riff and hear the story behind what inspired them. Bringing everything full circle, it channels the spirit of old school Alice with instantly recognizable grit and plenty of gusto. It’s everything you’d hope for from him and more..
Trash is the eighteenth studio album released by Alice Cooper in 1989. The album features the single "Poison", Cooper's first top ten hit since his single "You And Me" in 1977 and marked a great success in Cooper's musical career, reaching the Top 20 of various album charts and selling more than two million copies of a studio album. After Alice's return to the music industry with the successful "The Nightmare Returns" tour, Cooper had sought assistance from Desmond Child to create a comeback album. Trash became one of Cooper's biggest albums, accompanied by music videos for "Poison", "Bed of Nails", "House of Fire", and "Only My Heart Talkin'". A successful year-long worldwide concert tour in support of the album was documented in the home video release Alice Cooper Trashes The World.
By 1982, Alice Cooper's brand of shock rock had been shoved out of the pop-chart spotlight by new trends like punk and new wave. To counteract this decline in popularity, Cooper worked elements of these sounds into his style and also played up the satirical/comedic angle to his music. The result was Zipper Catches Skin: while it's not a success on the level of Billion Dollar Babies or Welcome to My Nightmare, it is surprisingly listenable. The songwriting subjects are some of the most unusual of Cooper's career, which is saying a lot: "Tag, You're It" is a primarily spoken word spoof of slasher films, while "Zorro's Ascent" depicts the world's most famous swordsman facing down death. However, the strangest of these songs is "I'm Alive (That Was the Day My Dead Pet Returned to Save My Life)," which speaks for itself.