A brutally important album for not just the career of Alice Cooper or producer Bob Ezrin, but for pop music in general, for all three were at a crossroads. 50 years later, Love It To Death does not sound as dangerous as it did in its heyday, but this was one of the major gauntlets thrown down to clear the post-Love Generation fog everyone was experiencing. Sinister, jagged, disturbing passages slash vivid flashes of imagery with Alice's finely focused and ever more disdainful sneering vocals and lyrics. For the first time, there's an undisputed anthem - "I'm Eighteen" - which is as tenously vulnerable as it is recklessly unpredictable. For those more cinematically inclined, extended theaters of psychological torture await thanks to "Black Juju" and "The Ballad of Dwight Fry". The bottom line was - the villains of rock have arrived, and with a vengeance.