Uh! All Night: First, yes that is a bad title. However, it's also my favorite song on the album, absolutely love that duh-duh-duh-na-nuh-nuh riff, such a fun hooky song, it's such a great guilty pleasure song, I give this a twelve on a s scale of one to ten. Overall, Asylum is....okay. Hardly a great album, but if I had to listen to a record between Lick It Up and Revenge, this would be the one. Now I'll go to my little game of scoring Paul and Gene during this era: Paul:6 Gene:3 And now my ranking of the songs on here: Uh!All Night (5) Tears Are Falling (5) Secretly Cruel (4/5) I'm Alive (4/5) Anyway Way You Slice It (3.5/5) King Of the Mountain (2.5/5) Trial by Fire (2/5) Who Wants To Be Lonely (2/5) Radar For Love (1.5/5) Loves A Deadly Weapon (1/5) Which adds up to an average of 3.05 out of 5.
UH! ALL NIGHT Fun fun fun! Do you get that I think it's fun tune? This one was great live too...with the audience joining in on the "Uh!" excitement! Yes, certainly one of the worst title ever...but who the heck cares? When you work all day... And the video is a blast!
Asylum rankings: King Of the Mountain 10/10 Anyway Way You Slice It 8/10 Who Wants To Be Lonely 10/10 Trial by Fire 5/10 I'm Alive 2/10 Loves A Deadly Weapon 8/10 Tears Are Falling 10/10 Secretly Cruel 7/10 Radar For Love 9/10 Uh! All Night 7/10 Overall a top 5 best KISS record for me...loved it then, probably love it more now.
UH! ALL NIGHT The album ends on a high note as it's a Top 3 song for sure. Everything clicks here: the chuggy guitar riff, Bruce's solo, the background vocals. This was in Light Rotation on MTV for a few weeks but not sure how much of an impact it was on Dial MTV. The video is fun and Busby Berkley inspired with the dancing. I'm glad they did a video with a sense of humor for this one as its a silly song but a good silly song. Too bad they stopped playing this live after the Asylum tour. I wouldn't want Paul to do it now in his current voice.
"Uh! All Night" Captures the classic KISS vibe nicely, although maybe we could argue that that's because Paul was trying to write something in the vein of "Tomorrow and Tonight". But in my opinion this is a better song than "Tomorrow and Tonight". There's a bit of a "Lick It Up" vibe to it, too, which is cemented in right from the start with the muted A rhythm. The chorus riff is really nice and catchy, and it's very bluesy, too. I love the key change of the verse (the chorus is in A minor, the verse in E phrygian) because it's so abrupt--just wham! here's the V chord, but surprise, it's the I chord now. There's a weird tension to that, and the return to the A minor of the chorus is almost as abrupt. I like the Chuck Berry-style riffing of the verse--and that's classic KISS, of course. The harmonic progression of the verses is well-constructed, with a lot of well-placed passing chords that function like bVII-Is (basically it's the "You Really Got Me" idea, but it's done in a more complex, kind of cyclical way here). And I like the melodic slides on the vocal a lot, too. The melody throughout is good, actually. I wish I could say that about every tune on this album. The goofiness of the lyrics is fun. I like how they play that up with the pause and "Uh!" after the solo, too. The chorus probably repeats a bit too much at the end, but overall this is an excellent tune.
Alright, so thoughts on Asylum in general. I think I enjoyed Asylum more than ever by going over it in this much detail. However, I might still rank it at the bottom re the KISS albums we've covered so far. (I can't say for sure until I relisten to everything when we're done if I'd still rank it lower than Animalize . . . and anyway, that could change on any future relistening.) In my opinion, one of the problems with Asylum is that it's rather inconsistent for KISS. It seems to have something of a split personality. It seems like they were shooting for three things that aren't necessarily compatible: (i) mid-80s metal, a la Judas Priest etc., with a thrash influence, (ii) very commercial mid-80s hard rock/pop in the vein of "Lick It Up", "Heaven's on Fire" etc. and (iii) recapturing while updating a classic KISS vibe a la Rock and Roll Over/Love Gun. The tunes kind of go back and forth between those three different modes, almost as if we're listening to three different bands. Aside from that, I have more constructive criticism of these tunes than I normally do with KISS, including that I too often find the melodic and catchiness quotient to be relatively lacking. However, I do still like the album quite a bit despite these flaws. I just played through the whole thing again now to double-check my song ranking, and I was digging it a lot on this casual relisten--including some tunes that I was more critical of in my "microscopic analysis." Here's my song ranking. This is the second album in a row where I prefer the Paul songs to the Gene songs, contra my usual preference: Who Wants to Be Lonely Tears Are Falling Uh! All Night Radar for Love King of the Mountain I'm Alive Trial by Fire Love's a Deadly Weapon Secretly Cruel/Anyway You Slice It (I couldn't make up my mind which of those two I like more)
I'm gonna jump in here and say what you disliked about Asylum--the split personality--is exactly why I love it. I love the diversity of it, and I'll throw this out for you to think about. Isn't that what KISS has always done? Let's jump back to Hotter Than Hell. You have the straight ahead rockers like Got To Choose and Hotter Than Hell, the thrashers in Parasite and Watchin' You, the anthem in Let Me Go Rock N Roll, the heavy metal of Goin' Blind and Strange Ways...heck, you have a little country edge in Mainline...isn't that variety what Asylum gives us too?
UH! ALL NIGHT Well, unlike RFL, this one was as good as I remembered. Was it worth sitting through all the crap that came before? Probably not, but let's be honest, if it had been track one, would anyone have bothered with the rest of this rancid album? It's the closest Asylum gets to the Klassic KISS sound; can't say I'd have wanted a whole album of this kind of lo-brow boogie in 1985, but maybe 2 or 3 more tracks in this vein would have alleviated the sheer tedium & embarrassment of all the failed speed/heavy rockers? Especially on side one, which is borderline unlistenable, IMO. I can't place the KISS song the opening vocal reminds @GodShifter of, but it's kind of like a challenged cousin of Street Fighting Man. Genuinely intrigued to be moving on to Crazy Nights. I'm almost certain I bought this after HITS as a cutout, and played it literally once - not because I thought it was terrible, but because I'd moved on by then, and no longer had any inclination to invest time familiarising myself with this kind of predictable, unadventurous rock-lite any more. But I'm pretty sure it's not as obnoxiously & directionlessly heavy as Asylum, so maybe there are some under-appreciated KISS pop-rock gems just waiting to be rediscovered...?
UAN: More (weak) Led Zep 'inspiration.' Filler. Paul sure likes to commit to lame songs in this generation of KISS. Question: anybody know what "uh!" means?? And why would they do it all night?? Is it star-gazing? Did I get it right? Asylum: Welp, interesting. I might actually buy this if I came across a $1-2 CD bin. (I'm not sure why. I mean, I've without it this long.)
It's not that I don't like variety, but it sounds kind of like three different bands to me. There's not a "unified" sound to it, like there is on Hotter Than Hell.
Uh! All Night - I definitely like this one a lot more than I remembered. I think the title is really dumb, but after listening to it a couple of times I now grudgingly admit that it works just fine for what it is. As others have noted, this tune is kind of a throwback to the Love Gun era, cross-pollinated with some Lick It Up style single-note chugging riffage. Paul sings the song well, and doesn't get too carried away with the sort of "bollocks in a vice" histrionics that marred some of the other tracks. The chorus is really catchy and fun but somewhat regrettable when it's over - like the aural equivalent of a social disease. My favorite part of the song is the breakdown after the guitar solo, where it builds back to the chorus riff (with some cool ad libs from Paul). This song is a solid 9/10. Here are my Asylum rankings: Tears Are Falling 10/10 Who Wants To Be Lonely 9/10 Uh! All Night 9/10 Trial By Fire 7/10 King of the Mountain 7/10 I'm Alive 6.5/10 Secretly Cruel 6/10 Anyway You Slice It 3/10 Radar For Love 3/10 Love's A Dirty Weapon 1/10
I can only speak for myself (and I suspect some others who have weighed in along the way) that, yes, I would have "bothered".
I was expecting Uh! All Night to take a bit of a beating today so I'm surprised that it's fairing so well. I like it too though I can't say I hear what some people are saying in a sense of it being reminiscent of the old KISS. If anything it seems like a really blatant attempt at Populist Paul Stanley ("we work all day") and in that way comes off a bit odd to me. But not in a bad way, it just seems strangely jarring; though off the top of my head I can think of "workin' like a dog baby all day long" coming from Paul previously. I think the title misleads in the sense that this actually seems like it's almost as crafted as the singles Paul wrote for this album. Some real care was taken in the recording of Uh! All Night. I'm not nearly as taken with the guitar solo as a lot of you but it's fine. I'm all over the map on Asylum; there's great stuff and there's stuff that is really below par. But once I say that I think that could be said for at least 50% of KISS albums (and maybe higher) so is that a reason to hate it? I don't hate it, it is at the lower end of their catalogue though.
Final Asylum thoughts and rankings: Listening to Asylum solidified that it is a lower ranking Kiss album for me and that Animalize still fares better than this. I get why someone may like this as it's a basic metal album. There's nothing too oft putting on it to hate it but the great moments are few and far between. I guess if this album was made by like a band like ...I dunno... Hurricane or someone similar then maybe it would be considered a good album for a band of that stature. But this is Kiss and I want more from my favorite band. Tears Are Falling Who Wants To Be Lonely Uh! All Night King of the Mountain I'm Alive Radar For Love Trial By Fire I'm Alive Secretly Cruel Anyway You Slice It Radar For Love Love's A Dirty Weapon
Uh! All Night Old KISS??? Uh! Nope Not Not to my ears anyway. I'll say that I haven't spent a lot of time with this one (maybe heard 3 or 4 times) so it's possible it will grow on me like some of the others I damned with faint praise have. But... How anyone can hear a really good song here, well, it's beyond me. Especially hot on the heels of Heaven's On Fire. Hello... THAT WAS ONLY ONE ALBUM AGO Paul, dude, if you're rip yourself off, wait 5 or 10 years. Then it's kind of ironic. Now, I don't know... lazy, cynical.... As of right now, not sure I'd put this in the top 5 for this album. The keepers for Asylum for me: Tears Are Falling Who Wants to be Lonely King of the Mountain Trial by Fire
Just a warning: I think Crazy Nights might be my absolute nadir in terms of KISS albums. In other words, don't expect a love fest. My rankings of Asylum: King of the Mountain 3/5 Any Way You Slice It 2/5 Who Wants to Be Lonely 3/5 Trial by Fire 2/5 I'm Alive 1/5 Love's a Weadly Weapon 2/5 Tears are Falling 4.5/5 Secretly Cruel 3/5 Radar for Love 3/5 Uh! All Night 3/5
Your observation is an interesting one. However, I'd argue that it only sounds like two different bands. I don't believe there was any conscious attempt to sound like the "3rd" band you mentioned (the one that sounded like throwback KISS, a la ROCK AND ROLL OVER). That's just Paul's and Gene's more natural songwriting style coming to the surface. But I do agree that the sped-up/thrash stuff seems like an odd companion to the poppy, MTV-friendly rock of stuff like "Who Wants To Be Lonely" and "Tears Are Falling". As Curveboy already suggested, different musical styles resting alongside one another on an album is way more of a positive than a negative. But it's relatively easy to picture the "metal" guys turning their noses up at what they would view as wimpy, top 40 stuff like "TAF". And the teenage girls who would love the MTV stuff would have no use for the thrashy stuff. (Then again, they'd probably only be buying the singles, anyway). But to me, the MTV-friendly stuff really isn't all that out of place with the "classic KISS" sound.
Yes that part is much better than the solo for me. But I guess I like Life in the Fast Lane! Usually when people hear a Zeppelin influence, I sometimes hear other influences, but all they hear is the Zep. But in this case, everyone is correct. I do admit the guitar and drums is cool, however. But Paul's Plant rip off was lame; I'd prefer that they let Billy Squier take a shot instead. The guitar solo's a mess. I'll give it a 5.4. I like it more than some do, but it's no Strutter!
