Easy Action

Alice Cooper’s second album finds them continuing to wander psychedelia’s freaky fringes. The acidic “Lay Down and Die, Goodbye” is seven minutes of cat-howling feedback, thudding grooves twisted into pretzels and harmonies that moan like the undead. But the band also begin flexing their hard-rock muscles on the album: “Mr. & Misdemeanor” sets the template for their love of mixing high-decibel riffs with show-tune glitz, and the pulverising “Return of the Spiders” pumps a Bo Diddley beat full of heavy-metal scowl and crunch.