Nudeviking vs. KISS

Since its their most famous album, I feel like you should include at least the first Alive. But not the later ones and the one they did with the orchestra, because that would be stupid.

I love that album of Paul Stanley stage banter. Puts a smile on my face whenever those tracks pop up on shuffle.

As for the music of KISS, the only thing I own is a Greatest Hits (are for housewives and little girls) compilation that I picked up at a flea market for $2 about twenty years ago. It currently resides in a CD binder that is literally labelled "JUNK". I do like some of the hits enough to have ripped them to the computer, but haven't explored much beyond that or ever felt compelled to, so I'm looking forward to reading this series of articles.

KISS - KISS (1974)

Everything has a beginning and this right here is the beginning of the inexplicable rock phenomenon known as KISS. I'm not going to give any biographical or historical information about how KISS came into being or why they ended up getting signed to a record label, because frankly it doesn't matter. It happened and they got to release an album in 1974. It was titled KISS because they were four extremely creative dudes. These are my thoughts about this album.

Preexisting Prejudices
I do not recognize any of these songs as being songs I've heard before by title alone, which I guess makes sense since even their label was a bit annoyed by the lack of a hit single and got the band back into the studio to record a cover of a song called, "Kissin' Time." This song got added to later editions of the album so I'll be listening to it here, but I don't think I've ever heard it before either.

To be honest, the only song on this record I have even heard of is "Cold Gin" since it might be the song that Paul Stanley's rants on People, Let Me Get This Off My Chest most often preceded. So he'd bellow some bullshit about rum and tequila before shouting "COLD GIN!" and undoubtedly launching into that song, but I never actually heard it since People, Let Me Get This Off My Chest was just stage banter and didn't include any actual songs.

Songs
"Strutter" - God almighty is this some cliche-ass rock n' roll. Paul Stanley is a pretty shitty singer and his lyrics about a woman who "gets her way like a child" aren't any good either. There's a by the number rock n' roll guitar solo and that's pretty much it.

"Nothin' To Lose" - The first instance of KISS hating the letter "G" in words ending with -ing (when looking through their discography before beginning this project I was a bit taken aback by how often an -ing word would end with an apostrophe instead of a g).. Shitty handclaps and honky tonk piano during the chorus. This song sucks.

"Firehouse" - That shitty FireHOUSE band is apparently named after this song. This song sucks almost as much as they do. KISS suck as lyricists. The song randomly ends with firetruck sirens.

"Cold Gin" - These guys suck at singing. The tempo of the song here is way more lethargic than Stanley's impassioned pre-song rants would have led me to believe. Like the intensity with which he would bellow, "COLD GIN!" caused me to believe this was going to be an absolute raver but it's instead the musical equivalent of the morning after pounding cold gins. Frankly I'm more than a little disappointed by this.

"Let Me Know" - More generic boogie rock. I've got nothing else to say about this except that I really hate how thin the guitar sounds not just on this song but across the entire album.

"Kissin' Time" - The riffs and junk are decent enough here but the vocals suck so much and the lyrics are dumb as fuck. This is a cover so I wouldn't normally hold that against KISS themselves but according to Kenny Kerner, one of the album producers, the song was rewritten to better suit KISS' image. Via Wikipedia, "We sat there, we all had pads and pencils, and we just went around the board. And we went, 'Alright, well... they're Kissin' in'... and somebody would go, 'Detroit'! And we'd go, 'Alright, they're kissin' in Detroit.' And that's how it went. We re-wrote the song in like twenty minutes." So fuck these shitty lyrics.

"Deuce" - Gene Simmons is growling about a grandma and how "your man is worth a deuce." I wonder if "a deuce" meant "literal fecal matter" like it does in these our modern times. This is such a boneheaded song. Last 20 seconds or so are just meedly-meedly guitar shit that fades out. I feel like I probably mentioned this when reviewing some bad Queen song with a similar outro but when I was young I used to think that any song that faded out was still being played by the band while I was listening to the song in question. Like they were physically incapable of ceasing to play and therefore the song had to be faded out so it could get put on a record.

"Love Theme From KISS" - This is such a garage band jam session. There's like a single riff and then some random guitar noodling and drum fills. The riff's not a terrible riff but like most garage band jam sessions it doesn't really go anywhere. There is one good thing about this song though and that is it lacks vocals.

"100,000 Years" - Paul Stanley yowling how "it must have been a bitch" when he was gone. Not really Paul. I was much happier without your presence to be honest. To be honest though, I do kind of like the guitar solo here. The drum solo? Not so much.

"Black Diamond" - We got acoustic guitar strumfuckery folks! See, KISS are sensitive fellows. Psych! Paul Stanley is bellowing, "HIT IT!" and now we've got generic 70s cock-rock riffs. This song blows. It's literally two and a half minutes of song that gets stretched out to over five minutes with some tape manipulation stuff where they slow the tape down. It's annoying as fuck.

Final Thoughts
We're not off to a particularly auspicious start here. The songs were mediocre 70s hard rock jams at best with cliche riffs and solos and boneheaded lyrical content. Moreover three out of the four members of the band sang on this and none of them were any good at all. I grew up with 90s alternarock and punk so my tolerance for singers that can't sing is pretty high but this was particularly egregious.

Reading about this album there are two things of note. The first is that Gene Simmons ranks this as his favorite KISS album which means one of two things. Either the albums that follow this are going to suck so much ass or Gene Simmons has terrible taste because this one was awful. The second thing that numerous write-ups on this album mentioned was though the album was not a commercial success and received little radio play (a fact that is apparent by the fact that I never head any of the songs off this record which is not the case with other KISS albums) the songs here would become staples of their live shows for years to come which probably means that when I review Alive! I'll get to hear all of them again. Huzzah...

Best Song: "100,000 Years" I did legitimately like the solo and some of the guitar work on this song.
Worst Song: "Nothin' To Lose" I guess? The problem here was that pretty much everything was just so cookie cutter and mediocre. Nothing was bad in an interesting way so it's hard to pick a worst song.

Viking, if we are to accept the bad band Kiss' etymologically dubious claim to have put the "x" in the word "sex", which musical artists would you, as a Kiss scholar, say should be give credit for the letters "s" and "e"?

Listened to the album.  It sucks.  Main redeeming vitue I suppose is that a lot of it is just bland and unmemorable rather than actively unpleasant to listen to.  I'd agree that 100,000 years is alright.  I also thought "Black Diamond" was fine if you removed the dumb slowed down tape stuff at the end.  And I think that Replacements cover kind of shows that a lot of the problem with Kiss isn't always the songs themselves (although most of the songs are quite mediocre), but it's more the less-talented members of Kiss themselves, especially Paul Stanley's bad singing voice.  I'm not even a Replacements fan tbh, but their cover of "Black Diamond" is an actually good song.  

KISS - Hotter Than Hell (1974)

So KISS' first record was kind of a bust commercially upon its release but instead of getting booted to be a little footnote in rock history, their record label decided that what the world needed in 1974 was a second album of KISS tunes. This is that record.

Preexisting Prejudices
Like their first album there are no songs here that I am familiar with. Unlike that record though there are two songs that I've heard covers of specifically "Goin' Blind" and "Parasite" by The Melvins and Anthrax respectively. I liked both those songs well enough so hope that maybe the original versions don't suck ass.

Songs
"Got to Choose" - Generic butt-rock riffs with that 1970s multi-tracked vocal thing going on. Nothing interesting going on here at all.

"Parasite" - Decent riffage here during the verses and a pretty good guitar solo here. The chorus isn't that good though. I think the Anthrax cover mentioned above is superior to this.

"Goin' Blind" - I am far more well acquainted with the Melvins version of this song so to hear it without sludgy riffs and Buzz Osbourne growling feels off. Also, I never really realized how creepy the lyrics to this are since it seems to be about a 93 year old dude hitting on a 16 year old girl.

"Hotter Than Hell" - Oh fuck, a "C'mon!" before the sining actually begins in earnest. Like "Cold Gin" on the previous album, this is another song that I knew the title of because of Paul Stanley bellowing about it on People, Let Me Get This Off My Chest but I'd never actually heard it before. It's not a particularly good or interesting song.

"Let Me Go, Rock 'n' Roll" - I have, in earlier record reviews, discussed my theory that no song with "Rock 'n' Roll" in the title can ever be good. This song can be added as another data point to prove that theory's validity. I mean it begins with someone bellowing "ROCK 'N' ROLL!" for crying out loud before launching into some generic boogie rock bullshit with lyrics that are 33% the words "YEAH!" and "BABY!"

"All the Way" - Random cowbell shit early on gives way to more generic cock-rock bullshit. So many songs on this album are just nondescript nonsense that would have popped up on a "classic rock" radio station in the mid-90s but you'd just let play because you didn't want to fuck around with the radio dial because you were driving some piece of crap car without radio presets and you knew it would be over in like 3 minutes anyway.

"Watchin' You" - KISS continue their hatred of the -ing suffix here. This song kind of makes me want to listen to Mountain who do this kind of rockin' way better than these jokers.

"Mainline" - More generic boogie rock. Whoever is singing on this song sucks worse than Paul Stanley.

"Comin' Home" - More irrational hatred for the letter g in words ending in -ing from the lads in KISS. Paul Stanley sings about how he's fucked all around the globe but the best fucking is his lady back home. Some of the riffs in this are pretty decent.

"Strange Ways" - Here we come... KISS aren't terrible when they do slinky sleaze like this. Overall this is not a terrible song. I like the riffs and the guitar solo and the lyrics are by and large innocuous which is an improvement over the boneheaded lyrics your average KISS song generally features.

Final Thoughts
Though the recording or mixing or whatever on this record sucks really bad, I think overall this is a better record than their debut but still not like a good record or anything I'd ever go out of my way to listen to. It is, for the most part, completely nondescript 70s hard rock nonsense. It's completely cookie cutter, paint by numbers stuff that fills the same sort of niche filled by countless other bands who were doing the same sort of stuff better and with more passion.

Best Song: "Goin' Blind" or "Strange Ways"
Worst Song: "Mainline"

Cover Version of a Song From This Album That's Superior to the Original
Since KISS kind of sucks I've decided to start doing something different with these reviews and post a cover of a song that appears on this album that is better than the version KISS did. I'm not going out of my way to seek out every cover ever done, but rather am just pulling from covers I've already heard prior to starting this project. If you have other recommendations feel free to let me know in the comments.

Today's cover is the aforementioned Melvins cover of "Goin' Blind" which appeared on their 1993 major label debut, Houdini. It's better than the KISS version.

While I broadly accept Nudie's contention that a song with "rock and roll" in the title is a massive red flag that what you are about to listen to will be shit, there are obviously exceptions, and none more exceptiony than...



Still sounds so fucking good.