I never said I was bothered by any lyric in Under The Gun except the "69" reference. The rest of the lyrics are fine and all I'm saying is that reference alone sinks the ship. Which is why I stand by how bottom of the barrel it is not just in KISS lyrics but even in an era of crap. Where you can analyze the lyrics to hundreds of songs of the era and find plenty of really dumb stuff I don't believe you can find many single lines that are THAT unnecessarily locker room sounding, juvenile in your words. Not from a band with the stature of KISS.
Shark! Sandwich! By the time we get to Carnival of Souls I'll be begging Paul to sing a song about 69!
Van Halen doesn't have any lyrics like that at all. At least not in the Dave era they don't. Later on with Up For Breakfast and things like that, yeah. But not with Dave.
I appreciate your perspective. If one bad line is enough to sink the lyrics to an entire song, than I would think it would be awfully damn hard for any hard rock song to end up finding favor in your eyes. But as I said, I respect your opinion!
My rating so far: KISS 10/10 Hotter than Hell 8/10 Dressed to Kill 7/10 Destroyer 9/10 Rock'n'Roll Over 9/10 Lover Gun 9/10 Alive II studio side 8/10 Dynasty 8/10 Unmasked 10/10 Music from the Elder 11/10 Killers new tracks 8/10 Creatures of the Night 6/10 Lick it Up 7/10 Animalize 4/10 SOLO Paul Stanley 8/10 Ace Frehley 9/10 Gene Simmons 9/10 Peter Criss 9/10 Out of Control 9/10 Let me Rock you 7/10
I'm virtually positive someone mentioned this is in lieu of "Magic Touch". Though we've been through about 12 albums + at this point so forgive me if my memory is hazy.
And I'm not even the biggest fan. My late best friend was obsessed with this album so much he played a cassette of Unmasked with Priest's Painkiller on the other side non-stop for years. Sometimes he joked that he doesn't need any other music in his life. I have tears in my eyes everytime I hear it.
Cool. Sentimental reasons is as good as anything else to validate a record. Hell, any reason is fine. I can say "Unmasked" is the worst album I've reviewed so far. It was just wretched (Gene's solo album might be worse - toss up perhaps).
Pretty sure if you go back and look (and I'm not really suggesting you do) you'll find in my "wrath" (as @npgchris defined it), I took a run at "hit the highway", "log in fireplace" and "no tongue can lick me clean" in one swoop. In all seriousness, I'd put "log in fireplace" as the best of those three lines. But it's a bit like asking if I'd rather be kicked in my right ball or my left ball. I just want the pain to stop!
Six pages behind at the moment but I wanted to comment on this ASAP while my thought is fresh--my apologies if this topic has been beaten to death. You make some great points I totally agree with. "Hotter Than Hell" is probably my favorite KISS album. Having said that, I cannot stand how it sounds. Nothing about the "low fi" quality makes it redeemable, and nobody should ever set out to make a "bad" sounding album, or have a producer who intentionally makes things sound like horse...dung. There's no way that should have ever been released sounding like that. No matter what the cost, and I don't care how broke the band or the record label are, it's gotta be redone. Tangentially, moving forward 40+ years, it's utterly amazing in this day and age that albums today sound so freakin' lousy (I am looking at you, Bruce Springsteen!!! And you too, Paul Stanley!!!!). Holy Mother, there are albums recorded in the 50's that sound better than some of the crap people are releasing today. Having said that, I have no problems with a raw sounding album, and when let me stipulate that when I saw "raw," I mean minimal effects just to balance the sound out and give the recording some ambience. I want my albums to sound like a they were recorded live in a good room with good mics. In the KISS world, the debut album, HTH and "Monster" are terrible sound quality-wise (Alive II is also pretty wretched sound-wise, but for completely different reasons), but "Dressed To Kill," while not one of my favorite KISS albums, sounds really great. It sounds like four guys playing in room, and I love that sound. IMHO, there's no reason the first two albums shouldn't sound like that. Okay, rant over. I feel much better--I am standing on the ground and my high horse is grazing in the backyard.
Sentimental reasons aside I truly love the record. Great production, almost every single song sounds like a Top 10 hit, hook after hook, wonderful performances from all 3 plus Anton Fig. Sometimes I think that 78-81 KISS gets trashed for the only reason that it doesn't sound like 74-77 era KISS. Well 67-70 era Beatles sure sounds nothing like 63-65 era Beatles and nobody seems to mind. Also why on Earth KISS were not allowed to make eclectic records by their fanbase like Queen or the above mentioned Fab Four? Why was Bowie allowed to evolve with each album and not KISS? KISS turned out to be a great pop band in 78-80 and a great pomp band in 1981 and there's nothing wrong with it.
All I can say is I've reviewed some 120 songs (probably more actually) at this point and tried to give every song a fair shake. The one album I found to be very tough to get through was "Unmasked" (solo albums not withstanding). So, four months + into this and that's my honest assessment. I thought the "Killers" stuff was very weak, too.
Yeah, I read the thread - amazing discussion every step of the way. Love it! I tried to list my main points of disagreement with the majority here. And yes, Killers is one of them. While I agree on the demo quality and Partners in Crime being a bore I still can remember the first time I ever heard KISS at the age of 12 - it was a lousy cassette of Killers which sounded extremely raw and dirty. I couldn't even hear what Paul was singing (I thought it was I'm awaiting tonight!) but I was blown away by the song and his voice. Loved the tune ever since. One thing for sure - vintage KISS doesn't benefit from a crystal clear HQ sound. It needs to sound dirty to truly deliver.
I'm not a big fan of this argument, or in particular blaming the fan base. It's ultimately not the fans obligation to buy every product and slobber all over it. Especially when you go after a youth market, you can't reasonably expect 14 year olds in 1979 to grow up to take part in a KISS Song By Song thread in 2017. Also who said KISS couldn't have made ten more concept albums or ten more power pop albums? Who says you have to sell 2 million records every time out? That's on the band for leaning too far into commerce at the expense of art. And I'm not criticizing them for it but don't blame the fans for that. Would it be so bad to have a forty year career and have a million dollars in the bank at the end instead of 200 million? Neil Young has had a pretty long and eclectic career while confounding fans. Being wildly eclectic means you have to accept that before you even think of marketing an album you know it's going to have few fans. KISS not doing that is on KISS, not the fans.
I don't blame anybody, it's just a shame that Music from the Elder flopped so bad that KISS didn't continue in the same vein for at least a year or two and had to jump on an 80's metal bandwagon in a rather forced, artificial way. Metal stuff on The Elder still sounds much more organic and epic to me than Creatures. And yes, more metal. As metal as 70's Sabbath.
And talking about KISS sounding and looking dirty - that is the big difference between 83 and 84 KISS. On Lick it Up the band sounds dirty and looks dirty in those videos (title track particularly). On Animalize both the sound and the image in the vids despite the album title is more classic glammy. And glammy not in a dangerous post-apocalyptic way like 1983. Better songs aside that's why Lick it Up is so much cooler.
I want a legitimate recording of Rip and Destroy so bad! Have they ever played it like this (other than in Phantom)?
