Kiss has never been a band who lived for the album. Instead,
\nthey’ve been — and still are — either a band who live for the
\nperformance (as evidenced by their lengthy “goodbye” tour) or for
\nthe song. There’s nothing inherently wrong with this — though it
\ncan make for the occasional lackluster album.<\/p>\n
\nKiss<\/i>, the band’s 1974 debut, is proof of this. There are
\nsome great songs on this album, to be sure; the fact that some of
\nthese still are fan favorites a quarter-century after they first
\nhit vinyl is proof of that. But Paul Stanley and crew seem to put
\ntheir focus on a few songs — and in turn, the whole album
\nsuffers.<\/p>\n
Granted, this was a first effort, and as first efforts go, it
\nreally isn’t bad at all. For that matter,
\nKiss<\/i> is not a bad album in the least. I happen to love Kiss,
\nand still enjoy hearing songs like “Deuce” and “Cold Gin” today,
\nespecially when I need a mental kick in the ass.<\/p>\n
Admittedly, maybe the charm of some of these songs is due to the<\/p>\n
Alive!<\/i> factor — namely, the fact that they were featured on
\none of the most revered live albums ever. But there is something
\nspecial about hearing tracks like “Strutter,” “Firehouse” and
\n“Black Diamond” almost at the time of their conception, rawer than
\nyou could have imagined in the studio. (That said, I absolutely
\nhate the stretched-out “slow down” ending of “Black Diamond” —
\nwhat a waste.)<\/p>\n
So what’s my beef with
\nKiss<\/i>? I can sum it up in three tracks, all of them filler.
\nThe first is “Let Me Know” — is it me, or did Kiss seem to re-work
\nthis one one album later into “Let Me Go, Rock And Roll”? (Save
\nyour flames, I’m not saying it was a direct copy.) Second is
\n“Kissin’ Time,” which is about Kiss’s equivalent to any rock band
\nwriting a song about being in a rock band. The translation just
\ndoesn’t work. And finally, there’s “Love Theme From Kiss” — what
\nthe hell was
\nthat<\/i> about? An instrumental breaking up the energy the band
\nestablished on “Deuce,” which seems to have no purpose being on
\nthis disc whatsoever.<\/p>\n
And that’s where my concerns would start to come in. If a band
\nrelies on filler on their debut album, it’s a sign of trouble
\nahead. And let’s be honest, Kiss has had an ear for filler over the
\nyears.<\/p>\n
Don’t get me wrong,
\nKiss<\/i> is still very much worth checking out, especially if
\nyou want to get to know the band behind the facepaint and
\npyrotechnics on
\nAlive!<\/i>. But tread softly on a few areas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":25833,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[5731],"rating":[5614],"class_list":["post-37039","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-kiss","rating-rating-c-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/37039","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37039"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/37039\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25833"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37039"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37039"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=37039"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=37039"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}