earMUSICAlice Cooper‘s latest studio album, Paranormal, gets its release today, July 28. The shock rocker enlisted some big-name rockers to play on the 12-track collection — U2 drummer Larry Mullen Jr., ZZ Top frontman Billy Gibbons and Deep Purple bassist Roger Glover.
In addition, Cooper reunited with the three other surviving members of his original Alice Cooper Band — bassist Dennis Dunaway, drummer Neal Smith and guitarist Michael Bruce — to write and record two tracks, which appear on a bonus disc packaged with the album.
While a number of Alice’s recent records have been concept albums, he says he wanted to change things up for Paranormal, which he recorded in Nashville with his longtime producer Bob Ezrin.
“Bob and I decided that, ‘Let’s break the mold,'” Cooper explains in a video Q&A posted on the earMUSIC label’s YouTube channel. “‘Let’s not make an album where there’s a storyline. Let’s just make an album of great songs, wherever they lie.'”
He compares listening to Paranormal to “reading a book of 12 Twilight Zone tales.”
In keeping with the “breaking the mold” theme, Cooper tapped Mullen Jr. to play drums on most of the tracks.
“If you think of Alice Cooper and U2, you [wouldn’t really] ever put them in the same category,” Cooper maintains in the video. “But let’s use that element, that drummer, and put him our kind of songs, see what happens. And it really ended up unique. It ended up really, really cool.”
You can check out snippets of Paranormal‘s 12 songs in a preview video that’s also viewable on earMUSIC’s YouTube channel.
Alice is winding down a summer European tour, and he’ll support Paranormal in the U.S. on a joint trek with Deep Purple that gets underway August 12 in Las Vegas.
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