KISS - KISS

Remember when bands were hungry? They were young and conquering the world right from the slim pickin’s of a local dive without a care besides makin’ it big’. Before they would destroy records and take over the hard rock genre, KISS was four New York guys that weren’t just hungry; they were a quartet of famished kids decimating the local scene with some pretty powerful songs that would eventually formulate this first record, KISS. It stands as a testament to what can transpire when the passion and fire is all that motivates you.

While commercial success was still a couple of years down the pike, KISS stands alone as the band’s primitive, yet undeniable powerhouse. Sure, Destroyer and Love Gun mark the band’s legacy, but once the music kicks in and “Strutter” literally oozes out of the speakers how can you not be submissive? Ace Frehley’s guitar work is the absolute standard for what would later influence everyone from Eddie Van Halen to Dimebag Darrel, and these influences are heard in the slowest doom metal to the fastest black metal music. You can listen with half an ear to some of the better known bands of today and hear KISS music all over it, whether some would admit this or not.

That overly bluesy tone of “Strutter” and “Nothin’ to Lose” simply make this bassist want to learn some more guitar chords at the fast-approaching age of 40. Aside from Mister Frehley’s monster guitar tone spitting out of that famous Les Paul, Gene Simmons’ bass is far from Billy Sheehan or Jaco Pastorius, but its thumping thunder provides the perfect backbone for such tracks like “100,000 Years,” “Firehouse” and “Let Me Know,” the latter being one of my favorite KISS tracks. The vocal trade-off between Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons is classic KISS that, in my opinion, has never been matched.

While the band may have hit its zenith at Destroyer some three years after this debut, this album provides the perfect hard rock album with which many a standard has been set, crossed, raped and perfected. While never an overly proficient drummer, Peter Criss has some of his best moments in “Black Diamond” and the Ace Frehley composition “Cold Gin”; firing on all cylinders, this first album in a long line of hits and misses is a classic for the ages that may seem dated to the less ardent metal fan, but even to a casual KISS fan as myself its potency is undeniable. While some remastering done a few years ago has certainly helped the album’s legacy, especially in the bass department, nothing can re-create the homogenous perfection that was the utter simplicity of this record. For 1973 this album was ahead of its time in all areas, saying nothing for the visual aspect that would become KISS’ blessing and curse. 
                       
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I was never a hardcore KISS fan when I was younger. By the time I was five and six years old I had already discovered AC/DC, Black Sabbath, Rush and Led Zeppelin so KISS seemed too tame for me, or at least that’s my stock answer. Seriously, how many of us remember what we were thinking some 34-years ago? Well, that said I converted ever slightly down the line. I do remember buying this album in 1979 from the local Goldblatt’s store for a whopping $5 brand new. My original LP still has the “Kissing Time” on it, a seeming rarity today I gather. I can’t recall what I thought of it back then, but the album cover was cool enough to grab my attention. I also remember being in Toys-R-Us and looking up at the HUGE stacks of KISS dolls that adorned the entire shelving unit in front of my eight-year-old eyes. I remember feeling these guys were the biggest thing I had ever seen, but even at that age I was more impressed with the marketing of Colorforms and lunch boxes than the music. 

What fascinates me is that this album garnered such low sales upon its initial release, which is amazing considering later albums weren’t as raw or nearly as potent in my opinion. It wasn’t until Alive came out in 1975 that these songs were even given a second glance. Still, the public is a fickle animal and even then it was general fear that kept the fans from really delving into the piece of history. I’m sure the psychotic look on Gene Simmons’ face on the cover did little to assuage the masses, not to mention the parents who more than likely figured Mr. Simmons was the devil incarnate. I remember playing this off and over the years and finding more aesthetic charm in it if nothing else, but the true serendipity would eventually find its way into my head…and it only took a couple of decades.

This first KISS album is one of the truly raw records to set the standard for metal music, and while I do not consider any facet of KISS’ career to be “real” heavy metal (though Creatures of the Night or Revenge do come dangerously close) the sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll tone is all over it. When you listen to this record and hear all of the now-obvious references to sex all over it, how can you not find it so criminally engaging, even at the hardest tongue-in-cheek level? While I tend to take metal music far more seriously than most, even being a regular killjoy when it comes to this particular aspect of the movement, this album is the happy exception. The basic topical stances throughout this record do nothing to negate the value and intrinsic purity of such a truly thin undertaking. When you hear that less is more, it must have had this KISS record in mind; the thin pallor that often covers the music here is somewhat shallow and often rudely dismissed as trite, but even in its basest form combustible formulas reach a boiling point when enough ingredients mix and match with reckless attentiveness. “Let Me Know” is the finest performance I’ve ever heard Gene Simmons give, and I’ve heard everything the man has done for the last 30-years of my life. What he and the rest of the band would later achieve on records like “Rock and Roll Over”, “Hotter Than Hell”, “Dressed to Kill” and “Destroyer” doesn’t hold a candle to the stripped down fundamentals that the band was built on here in this offering. It’s very saddening to see how the band is now more a brand name than a young, hungry quartet that would go on to conquer the world with minimalistic chord changes and songs that, in one writer’s opinion, would eventually become so contrived and faceless that even stadium sing-a-longs don’t make them any less trivial or opaque.

KISS has been one of the most successful bands to ever plug in instruments, and I don’t dare deny them a rightful place among the upper echelon of historical musicians. While it took me four decades to become a musician, gather a bevy of influences, collect and discard ideals and fantasies and suffer disappointments, it was in this long and storied period that is my life that I discovered KISS was far from stellar musicians; to be honest I find them to be average at best. But in that very minimalistic sojourn that has been going on for five decades now, the earliest material is usually the ‘throw-away’ record for many bands as they hone and perfect their skills. For me, it’s here that KISS had, for one brief moment, that honesty and innocence that would mark their faces and legacy far more intently than any two hours worth of make-up ever could.

Release Date: February 18, 1974
Label: Casablanca Records

TRACK LISTING

1.  Strutter
2.  Nothin' to Lose
3.  Firehouse
4.  Cold Gin
5.  Let Me Know
6.  Kissin' Time
7.  Deuce
8.  Love Theme From KISS
9.  100,000 Years
10.  Black Diamond

Total playing time:  35:11

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Classic Review

August 9, 2011

Reviewer: Chris

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