Yeah, yeah I hear you say, KISS isn’t metal. No they’re not. But they’re such a huge influence on so many Metalheds and bands, i thought it was worth at least mentioning them and reviewing the heavier releases of the band. With that in mind we have Kiss Destroyer from 1975. Its a banger of an album and contains some of their catchiest and heaviest tracks. I like KISS, but I don’t listen to a lot of their albums. I tend to like their live DVDs and best of collections which when you get the best of their stuff together you can see the magic that Kiss had. I find when I listen to the albums right through there’s a fair amount of forgettable songs. That’s my opinion anyway.<\/p>\n\n
The album opens up with one of the KISS live favourites, “Detroit Rock City” this song besides being a lot of fun has some pretty gritty guitar tones and gets the album off to a great start. Everyone in the band is on fire here, great riffs, vocals and production is awesome in an organic way. “King of the Night Time world” is up next another great song and one thing about this album the bass sound is fantastic and actually audible, a criticism of many albums in the Metal Genre. “God of Thunder” is actually pretty goddamned metal. The song features Gene Simmons’ more baritone and gritty vocals rather than Paul Stanley. I could actually see this song influencing a whole bunch of metal heads, even if they don’t admit it. Next up the rock ballad “Great Expectations” you will be forgiven for skipping this one if you have it on CD. Very cheesey stuff, that song.<\/p>\n\n
\n“Flaming Youth” is passable but really nothing special. “Sweet Pain” is a little better but is a bit of a weaker start to the second side of this album. “Shout it out Loud” redeems the second side in a big way, this is a great anthemic rock song. I realise that not every song on an album can be an anthem or the album would get really “Samey” but anthemic songs is what Kiss do best. It’s the big chorus and heavy rock riffs that really get me when this band is firing well. Back to antoher ballad with “Beth” but at least this one is a great song as opposed to the earlier “Great Expectations” and has some great use of an orchestra providing some backing depth to proceedings. “Do You Love Me?” is another great mid paced Kiss number with the big catchy chorus we all love. <\/p>\n\n
Anyway over all this is a great album with a couple of *Ahem* forgettable tracks. Kiss, whilst not necessarily metal were the influence for a lot of bands including Pantera, Venom, Skid Row and countless others. For that they do deserve a healthy slice of respect and hey their songs rock! <\/p>\n\n
For more great Heavy Metal album reviews be sure to keep checking back on Metalhed.com<\/a> as regularly as you can!<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n