To quote the great Paul Stanley...
"If you haven't seen KISS live then you don't really get us." They are very much a live band, hearing their "hits" on the radio gives no indication of what the band are like, as it's about 0.5% of their catalogue, and not a very good 0.5% at that and songs like Rock & Roll All Nite and I Was Made For Lovin' You and Shout It Out Loud are hardly even what most of their material sounds like. With the exception of Destroyer and Psycho Circus which are full of them, those kinda cheesy anthems only showed up once every few albums. For the most part, it's all guitar driven hard rock all about sex & sleaze!
Kisstroyer are great at capturing the KISS vibe and win most people over quite easily at their shows! Hearing 25 songs packed with unreal classic sounding hard rockin' riffs blasting through walls of marshalls and awesome hooks with a packed house singing to every word... you see what KISS are about! And that's just a Kisstroyer gig... I'm lucky enough to have seen the real KISS seven times!
You know also, how there is a whole KISS vs Aerosmith kinda rivalry at times for "greatest American hard rock band".... Aerosmith can kiss my ass!!! They are good don't get me wrong, but their entire argument (they don't like KISS much lol) rests on "we didn't have to wear makeup & use bombs". So what? Take away that anyhow and what do you get? You get 2 great Aerosmith albums in the '70s (Toys & Rocks) and a bunch of crap albums with a good song here or there. Draw The Line & Night In The Ruts were fucked, they lost the plot, and the first 2 albums they were still trying to find their sound. They have alot less great songs & classic songs over their career than KISS do and far more filler (and KISS have lots of filler themselves).
KISS on the other hand started with a bang right from the start with a debut album that has SEVEN songs that still get played live, and kept up the quality until their 6th studio album, also doing 2 AWESOME live albums (one regarded as the best live rock album ever by many) in that time. And that was all in 4 years! Not only that, the next 3 albums which were kinda the band's "falling apart" era losing members, going through changes, selling out etc are still 10x better than Draw The Line, Night In The Ruts, Done With Mirrors & Rock In A Hard Place! And what did they do after that? Hit back with their best & heaviest album yet Creatures Of The Night, then just kept getting even better through the 80s and into the early 90s with their best shit ever!
I have no idea where that rant came from!!! Hahaha I just had to get it off my chest coz I've heard so many people saying Aerosmith are so much better than KISS. Fuck Aerosmith! Regardless of Kiss having a better image & show, the proof is in Strutter, Hotter Than Hell, Parasite, Cmon & Love Me, Cold Gin, Black Diamond, She, Firehouse, Makin Love, I Want You, I Stole Your Love, Love Gun, Calling Dr Love, Goin Blind, Deuce, Got To Choose, 100000 Years, Shock Me, Christine Sixteen... and this is just in the first 3 years of the band's career!!! While Aerosmith were a standard blues bar hard rock band most of the time with a few standout hits, KISS changed the fucking face of rock & roll and had the most dynamic and explosive hard rock sound in the world in those years. No other band rocked as hard as KISS between 1974-1977. One of a kind!
And don't get me started on the '80s eras.... Aerosmith with 2 SHIT albums then 2 good but overrated albums when they cleaned up which had some great songs but more filler than Hot In The Shade! KISS with a decent pop-rock album in 1980 & a risky but critically acclaimed concept album in 1981.... then 6 killer hard rock/metal albums between 1982-89 all with less filler than Aerosmith's 2 "classics"!!! Janie's Got A Gun, Rag Doll, Love In An Elevator, Dude Looks Like A Lady... great songs. But I think I'll take Hide Your Hide, Who Wants To Be Lonely, Creatures Of The Night, A Million To One, Heaven's On Fire, Thrills In The Night, Forever, Reason To Live, Crazy Crazy Nights, Tears Are Falling, Lick It Up, Rise To It, War Machine, I Love It Loud, I Still Love You, Is That You, Uh All Night, You Make Me Rock Hard, You Love Me To Hate you etc anyday!!!!
Anyway, rant over. I know nobody even brought up Aerosmith OR bagged KISS but this Kiss/Aerosmith argument has been building up inside me for so long and I had to get it out somewhere!!!