I'm thru with the box! Of the Alice Cooper Band ones, Billion Dollar Babies and Love it to Death rule, Killer is good but not as good (as is Muscle of Love, bit more of an organic production there due to Jack Douglas) and School's Out (the album) sounds surprisingly weak, it seems to be like an album hastily cobbled onto a single (the brilliant title track) whose production sound has nothing whatsoever to do with the (great) sound of the single. School's Out (the album) sounds like a rush job to capitalize on the School's Out (single) mega hit. It probably was.
Of the later ones, Special Forces and Zipper Catches Skin are indeed nothing to write home about, it is amazing how a guitar trio that looks so formidable on paper (Wagner, Nitzinger and Pinera) could sound so limp in real life. I saw a gig of the Special Forces tour in Detroit at the time and the three guitarists failed to convince live too (and Alice looked terrible, unhealthily skinny), the Joe Perry Band which opened for them had so much more life and energy (with just two guitarists). Flush the Fashion, otoh, is not so bad, if totally mismonikered: Rather than flushing the fashion, Alice was chasing it by enlisting Roy Thomas Baker as a producer who gave him the sound of his Bostonian proteges of the time: FtF sounds like a The Cars album (right down to the guitar riffs, not just the new-wavish keyboard playing) whose master tapes have been stolen, with Alice secretly overdubbing his vocals.
But it has its charm (which Special Forces and Zipper Catches Skin are devoid of).
