The reunited Alice Cooper Group have released “Black Mamba,” the first track to appear from their upcoming album.
The Revenge of Alice Cooper arrives on July 25 and breaks a 51-year silence from the lineup that formed in 1968, including guitarist Michael Bruce, bassist Dennis Dunaway, drummer Neal Smith and late guitarist Glen Buxton.
The video for “Black Mamba” – which features a guest appearance by the Doors guitarist Robby Kreiger – can be seen below.
Read More: Why the Alice Cooper Band Fell Apart
Lead singer Cooper described the track as “definitely an Alice Cooper, from-the-ground-up song” in a recent interview with Billboard, adding: “We didn’t know where it was gonna go. At the end we looked at each other and went, ‘Oh, that’s pretty good!’”
“It wasn’t even a song yet,” Dunaway said of the studio session that spawned the track. “[W]e start jamming on the riff and warming up together. The next thing you know we get this swampy feel and decide it’s gonna be about a black mamba snake, which is very deadly, and it fell into place.
“It was so new Alice had to stop us at one point and ask me if I remembered what the melody was. It was very spontaneous.”
Alice Cooper Sings Differently With His Original Band
Producer, co-writer and backing musician Bob Ezrin added: “When we started to play that… I knew the spirit of the Alice Cooper group was back and that what we were making was very much an album that could’ve been [from] the ‘70s, when we were last together.
“It had the psychedelia, it had the artful drumming and bass playing, the great atmospheric guitars. It has Alice telling a really fabulous story, in character.”
Cooper reported that they’d made certain not to approach the record like one of his own. “If we’re gonna do an original Alice record, I want it to sound like the original Alice band,” he said. “The original band has a darker sound, and a heavier sound. It’s a very different personality, and I even sing differently when I sing with those guys.”
Watch the Alice Cooper Group’s ‘Black Mamba’ Video