Album Guide

If Alice wants us to know just one thing on his latest Warner Bros. release, Zipper Catches Skin, it's that he is now and always has been the undefeated hard rock champ of all times. There's not a single soft spot in any of Zipper's ten electrifying cuts — from first tune to last this is total attack/kill music in the best tradition of America's most sinister, dangerous and consistently entertaining rock artist.

Zipper Catches Skin, along with last year's Special Forces and 1980's Flush The Fashion, form Alice's trilogy for the Eighties--a message that might best be summed up in a single phrase — "featuring no ballads." If anything, Alice is even more demented, more of a threat to national security than when he first burst on the scene over a decade ago, handling snakes and terrifying the moral majority — even more an androgynous rock and roll hell-raiser than the headline maker of yore. In short, all bets are off — Alice is back in town.

Zipper Catches Skin takes the music and mania of Alice Cooper to new heights — with production and arrangements by Alice and Erik Scott. Zipper features work by Alice on synthesizer and reunites him with master guitarist Dick Wagner — who wrote and played guitar on such landmark LP's as Alice Cooper Goes To Hell and Welcome To My Nightmare. The LP features such songs as "I Am The Future," co-written by the renowned Lalo Schifrin and heard as the title track of the upcoming film Class Of 1984 — a flick that makes Clockwork Orange look like Bambi. Performed by special request of the film's producer, "I Am The Future" pretty well sums up Alice's sentiments for the eighties.

"I Like Girls," another Zipper Catches Skin grabber, highlights a duet with Alice and Waitresses' lead singer Patty Donahue, while "Zorro's Ascent" captures Alice in another of his myriad fantasy roles--a super-cool Zorro.

"No Baloney Homosapiens" is dedicated to Steven SpeiIberg and will definitely have extraterrestrials phoning home, while "Adaptable (Anything For You)" is Alice's favorite cut and an absolutely devastating exercise in rock and roll fury.

Earlier this year, Alice completed a sold-out tour of Spain, France and the United Kingdom, winding up with three SRO dates at London's Hammersmith Odeon and proving once again that he can still knock them dead. Currently ensconced in a protected estate in Scottsdale, Arizona, rumour has it that Alice is engaged in some highly secretive work with some top U.F.O. experts. The nature of the project, not even his good friends at Warner Bros. know.

When all is said and done, there is only one Alice Cooper, and Zipper Catches Skin is one album that'll really grab you.