Alice Cooper

ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons and Deep Purple’s Roger Glover are among the guests.

As Vincent Damon Furnier nears 70, his 27th studio album is tremendous fun throughout – and never more so than on Dead Flies, two-minutes-and22-seconds of hooky, schlockhorror doom, proclaiming: “And your phone knows more about you than your daddy or your mother!” Fabulous, too, to hear U2’s Larry Mullen (a surprising but suitably hellraising guest on nine tracks) ease into the unreconstructed rawk groove of Private Public Breakdown. Dynamite Road – think The Devil Went Down To Georgia with Cadillacs and limos – is equally sparky, while the title track is an ace slice of modern metal theatre. And with Bob Ezrin back in the production chair and original Alice Cooper band members Dennis Dunaway, Neal Smith and Michael Bruce appearing on the closing triptych that includes transgender anthem Genuine American Girl, the off-piste thrills keep on coming. James McNair