Nope, you're not the only one. I'm good with Unholy and a couple others, but mostly it's a disappointment. I love the production...Ezrin got a fantastic sound on there, but most of the songs are juvenile and extremely out of date by 1992. It seems like most of the fanbase disagrees with us and sees Revenge as a return to form.
I'm with you & AirJordan Fan93. Revenge is my least favourite KISS record. I think that because Bob Ezrin was back in the producer's chair, we'd get another Destroyer but for me it sounds like a bad pastiche of a metal album.
I posted these in the End of the Road thread but wanted to put them here too. This is one of the reasons we all loved KISS. Sweden 1976.
The best stuff on the album is the stuff they wrote with Vinnie Vincent and I don't think it is a coincidence that those are the songs that hold up best while the rest of the album suffers.
bootlegs are always going to be hit & miss and the recording quality can sway from awesome soundboard recordings to terrible audience recordings. There is a great soundboard from the Love Gun tour from the Cow Palace that I really like. Bare in mind that Ezrin last worked with them on the Elder so he was 50/50 on his output with them when he did Revenge. I think the album would have worked way better if they made the rest of the album like Unholy and not having one pure outright early 1990s Heavy Metal song then a lot of songs that still felt like 80s hair metal but without sounding like it musically.
I always found it strange they wound up working with Vinnie again after sacking him after Lick It Up. Turns out he’s a good songwriter.
His big strength to KISS was his songwriting ability more so than his guitar playing. Even on Lick it Up he co-wrote all but two of the songs on the album
To me an underrated part of Kiss. I liked his Vinnie Vincent Invasion album which is so rare these days on vinyl.
I suppose they didn't have to work closely with him in the writing process, not the whole group anyway. On tour, working close his peculiarities would not have been fun. By the way, I much prefer Kiss over VVI.
Revenge was a return to form, but that's more telling of Hot In The Shade and other previous LP's than a statement about how good Revenge is. I think it sounds great, but yeah, "Take It Off" and "I Just Wanna" were already outdated by 1992. I actually like the ballad, even if it's a lesser "Forever," but the songs that didn't get played on the tour ("Tough Love," "Thou Shalt Not," "Paralyzed," etc) were just as forgettable as most of the filler on Animalize Or Asylum, they just sounded better/heavier.
"Take It Off" & "I Just Wanna" are pure KISS, tunes that I expect & love from them. "Revenge" was a great album and I wish they would have continued in that direction
Just scored a still sealed copy of Destroyer (corner bent but vinyl mint)... haven't heard it on LP since '77... so, totally time tripped today by playing my vintage Stratego game with my son as the vinyl spun... sounded great!
I like Revenge a lot,but COS more. It's unique in their catalogue, like Elder. Yeah uh I liked that too.
I never heard the Carnival album, but I always liked the Elder, even though as a pup when I put it on, it was really not what I was expecting. I'm glad they re-released it in the correct order, but having said that, at 13 or 14 or whatever I was at the time it came out, I would have been even more surprised by the album lol
I was 25 or so when it came out. I wasn't expecting it either. It was an easy listen for me if disjointed some. I was hugely, still am, into Progressive Rock, so it was easy in that aspect, Loving concept albums and such. It was easier than Tales of The Topographical Ocean was. Didn't appreciate that til 20 years later
