Alice Cooper- Special Forces

Now, this has always been one of my favorite Alice albums, and from a period when he delved a little bit into new wave obscurity, this one shines through as a gritty gem (a dirty diamond if you will) that is Alice's most straightforward rocker since the 70's and returns in alot of ways to the sound of the original AC band, and is probably his best recent rocker at that point in time. The only real complaint you could make about this, at least IMO anyway is it comes of a little uneven at melding the two sounds at times, which I think could be do to the fact, that while it does sound like a good return to older material, Alice is pretty much writing on his own here instead of with the original AC band who were quite the driving force along with Alice himself when it came to writing the songs. Although his snide lyrics are perfectly in place here.

The album starts off with "Who Do We Think We Are?" the album's lone single, which stands as an excellent song in Alice's career and one of his best rockers, but is unfortunately one of his most overlooked as well. It would've fit in well with any of the "classic" albums. "Seven & Seven Is" (which is a Love cover), which is next up is also a pretty rocking track, that manages to splice AC's more modern (at the time anyway) sound with the rock of past albums. "Prettiest Cop On The Block" follows along in the same vein of Seven & Seven Is, although not quite as dark sounding and flows nicely along with the sound of the album. Next we have "Don't Talk Old To Me" which is one of those slightly uneven songs, which while flows well within the context and sound of the album, relies a bit heavier on the modern sounding aspect of the album, flows nicely, but couldve definately been written better. Following on the heels of that, we have "Generation Landslide '81 (Live)" (although it is not actually live) which does fit very well in with the sound on the album and was rerecorded very faithfully to the original track from "Billion Dollar Babies". After this comes "Skeletons In The Closet" which is a great darker modern sounding one, which is essentially just drums and keyboards. "You Want It, You Got It" which follows it perfectly, which IMO is one of the best things about this album, none of these songs break the flow of the album and they meld in nicely together. "You Look Good In Rags" is another great rocker that would stand up just as well with the 70's material as "Who Do We Think We Are" does, and another of my personal favorites, nice little riff in the song. "You're A Movie" is a great tounge in cheek song about Patton that always will bring a smirk to my face, and melds both styles quite well. The recurring theme of guns and soliders is due to Alice's fondness of Solider of Fortune and war movies apparently. Now, the album closes with "Vicious Rumours" which is another great punchy rocker that also stands up well.

Now, in high school, I had a substitute teacher for a long term when one of my teachers got pregnant, she used to work in for Warner Bros for awhile and apparently had worked with Alice on quite a few albums, but had been there quite extensively for this album, given how bad Alice's alcoholism was at the time, this album came off great. She's how I had found at Generation Landslide was actually was studio recording with audience sounds added in and a few other stories that were pretty cool, I actually even got to see him for free out of it too.

"Look At You Over There, Ripping The Sawdust From My Teddy Bear" was the track that was cut from this album, after the inital pressing and several extra covers for the album with the song listed on it were done Alice decided it didnt fit in with the rest of the album (it later resurfaced on the boxset, listed as a demo even though it's a finished track. And Alice is right, it really doesnt fit the flow of the album).

So, this one easily makes it into my top 5, do yourself a favor and pick it up!

Oh, and there's a review for you Eyesore

Nice Review DC.Very well written.Eyesore will be proud.

Really cool, man! I just added this to my webiste last month too. I was realy surprised at how much I liked this album, so I went back to check out "Flush The Fashion" again, and it didn't sti all that well with me. But Special Forces is actually a rather solid album.

Good review. You should do some more reviews.

One of my Coop faves as well....good job, brother

I've never heard any of Alice's stuff from the early 80s, I'd love to get my hands on it though.