Love It To Death - ALICE COOPER****

Caught In A Dream/I'm Eighteen/Long Way To Go/Black Juju/Is It My Body/Hallowed Be My Name/Second Coming/Ballad Of Dwight Fry/Sun Arise

After the musical experimentation of their first two albums Alice Cooper released Love It To Death which would encapsulate their own brand of heavy rock combined with outrageous imagery. (US:35 UK:28)

“It's certainly the first manifestation of a particularly American brand of glam rock, trashy and self-consciously so, controversial in the way it marketed songs with highly sexualised or violent content to teens, and above all playing some down and dirty rock & roll. Not the band's best, but it's the album that put them on the map.”

“Love It To Death is the band’s first genuinely recognisable album in the style that they would very much make their own. It’s a loud, dirty and at times quite unsettling rock and roll album, which is everything an Alice Cooper fan wants.”

“You have the major label debut of a truly unique band, with songs that still sound new and original today. Most of the elements that made the Alice Cooper band such a popular 70s act are in place here.”

“The album is mostly simple hard rock tunes, heavily leaning towards garage and glam, yet every track is executed almost flawlessly.”

“Love It To Death was the first real classic Alice Cooper LP. Loose, brazen hard rock with glam and garage rock influences and his first super hit I'm Eighteen. The weird elements of the first two albums didn't disappear; there are many of them in songs like the schizoid Ballad Of Dwight Fry, or in nightmarish Black Juju. Not their best album but maybe the most direct and honest.”

"Love It To Death was an album that brought the genre of harder, heavier rock music and brought it into the mainstream. The singles and shorter tracks were both catchy and different to what had come before - I'm Eighteen becoming a classic in its own right. The album was still psychedelically influenced, and the sound is clearly of a band being tethered back from the indulgence of their earlier works.”

“I really fail to see what Alice Cooper has done to receive such wide critical acclaim. There is nothing here but standard by the numbers hard rock. Perhaps it was not so standard at the time, or there was something else to this artist beside the music, but either way it doesn’t make for a very good listen.”