Bob Ezrin produced all four of Alice Cooper’s platinum albums from the 1970s, including KILLER and SCHOOL’S OUT. Beginning with the same phased snare drums that Neal Smith employed on “Refrigerator Heaven,” double, roughhewn guitars of the utmost attack that push forward in nail-biting fretting-ness to underscore the same frustration Alice voiced in “I’m Eighteen” only reinforced by a low, authoritative refrain straight offa “Summertime Blues” when a parental unit laments: “Honey, where did we fail?

Although based on an in-flight meeting guitarist Michael Bruce had with the little old lady seated next to him, you gotta give the Coopers credit for being able to concoct something far more rock’n’roll into it; and it IS total Rock’n’Roll, by the way. Along with the singles “Under My Wheels” and “Be My Lover,” the record also includes “Yeah, Yeah, Yeah,” “Desperado,” and the prog-rock-inspired epic “Halo Of Flies. Alice’s restrained vocals borrow a loose woman from Rod Stewart’s “Every Picture Tells A Story” (“And it was. Cooper said in the liner notes of A Fistful of Alice and In the Studio with Redbeard, which spotlighted the Killer and Love It to Death albums, that the song “Desperado” was written about his friend Jim Morrison, who died the year this album was released.Released in 1971, KILLER was the fourth studio album recorded by the founding quintet of singer Alice Cooper, lead guitarist Glen Buxton, rhythm guitarist/keyboardist Michael Bruce, bassist Dennis Dunaway, and drummer Neal Smith. Through five songs and three epics, the Coopers came on nothing but strong with their band chemistry at an all-time high totally reckless, arrogant and caterwailin’ ‘bout nuthin’ and everything in particular and with a one-two-three: the album lays you out punch after punch without missing a beat or a single gory detail as they boiled the whole sucker down to eight terse and tense titles as though all the dark, seeping oils which had been pressed underground in their souls for so long had now been pushed upward from the core, mantle and through the crust of planet rock’n’roll to reveal diamonds of rock hard, unbreakable intensity just as multi-faceted.

on the Billboard 200 album chart, and the two singles " Under My Wheels" and " Be My Lover" made the Billboard Hot 100 chart. The grimly fiendish manner in which Alice spits out this last word into an extended ten second roar is unlike anything I’ve ever heard emit from a human voice. Desperado", along with "Under My Wheels" and "Be My Lover" have appeared on different compilation albums by Cooper.With tribal tom-tom drums and near-backwards soaring guitar lines, “Killer” emerges from a courtroom argument that ends the “Dead Babies” descending guitar sick-out like a tattered zombie slumping through a late night mist. Vinyl pressings are so good these days that it's like listening to the clarity of CDs but with the warmth of analogue.

At the opposite end of 1971 from “Love It To Death” stalked Alice Cooper’s fourth album, “Killer” as an aptly titled exhibition of no-frills, highly-ratcheted and the very tightest knit mesh of a rock’n’roll straightjacket. However, he said that "[the album] falters after 'Under My Wheels' and 'Be My Lover', neither of them an 'I'm Eighteen' in the human outreach department.

The Coopers first wrote one of the four-odd segments that comprise this headful epic whilst tripping out in the middle of the Arizona desert on mushrooms back in 1966, so no wonder it’s a rollercoaster ride to sweet oblivion if there ever was one; informed as it is by arid wasteland visions colourfully revealed in a disjointed, labyrinthine maze. The remainder of the album casts itself into a single journey crossfaded into parts unknown, much like the gothic run-in of “Second Coming”/”Ballad Of Dwight Fry” from their previous LP, “Love It To Death” (and like those two aforementioned tracks, were not banded separately on album.