Destroyer. The classic, quintessential KISS album, or so some would have us all believe. My opinion is that it was actually named for its producer Bob Ezrin, who had a hand in writing the worst songs on the album. So what's good and what's bad here? Well, it has some undeniable classics like "God of thunder", "Detroit rock city", and "Shout it out loud". "Do you love me" and "King of the nighttime world" have their places in the KISS canon. But you can't let this overshadow the fact that "Flaming youth" and "Beth" are 2 of the worst fucking gawd-awful piles of dog puke ever written. And Ezrin wrote them. He also helped write "Great expectations", which is a pretty rotten song except for the line "you see me play my guitar, and you see what my fingers can do/ and you wish you were the one that I was doin' it to", which is pretty awesome and I'm pretty sure that was all Gene Simmons. The only song left is "sweet pain" which is blah. So we have 5 good songs and four bad ones. The problem with KISS is that their bad stuff is far worse than their good stuff is good, and their good stuff is pretty fucking great. It's kind of an essential album, but people should listen to Love Gun instead.
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
KISS - Destroyer
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12 comments:
For what precious little time I have, I will say this:
KISS SUCKS!!!
You can read my reasoning somewhere in between the KISS and SUCKS. It's there; trust me.
Whatever.
Hatter, you had me at "KISS SUCKS!!!" I totally take back that cracksmoker comment.
With that said, I'll try to be serious for a split second. KISS was a commercial band in all the right ways. They wanted their fans' money, but they usually gave their fans something good (at least by fan definition) in return.
So why bash Ezrin, who is the epitome of a commercial producer? Obviously, their fans ate up that "Beth" shit, and it introduced the band to a slew of new fans too.
Ezrin simply helped KISS do what they were already doing incredibly well: reach the masses and sell them a shitload of records.
A good point, but like I said, he wrote the weakest songs on the album. Then, after Peter Criss left the band, Frehley was fixin' to quit, and their sales were in the toilet, they went back to Ezrin again. The result was "Music from the elder", and it speaks not only for itself, but also to Ezrin's inherent awfulness and his touch as feculent as Midas's was golden. A KISS concept album? ugh. Ace left in disgust and the rest of the band later admitted that he had a point, and that the album was worse than Hitler.
Like you said, they were already reaching the masses and selling shitloads of records. On the whole, though, the non-ezrin records prior to "Dynasty" have way, way more good songs on them than the Ezrin-tainted one does.
But does any other album have the two songs that might be most frequently associated with the band? (Detroit Rock City and Beth.)
Speaking of Detroit Rock City, I'm still annoyed at the Mighty Mighty Bosstones cover of DRC on the KISS tribute that came out in the mid-'90s. It was the Bosstones doing DRC. Was no one in the band able to figure out that they should've played the guitar intro on horns? I can hear it so clearly in my head, and it's so very very good. Unlike what the Bosstones actually recorded, which is the opposite of very very good.
Well, "Dressed to kill" has rock and roll all nite on it.
I remember the "KISS my ass" tribute. It had some poopy poop on it. A better tribute was "Hard to believe", which came out in 1990 on C/Z records and is pretty awesome. All's cover of "christine 16" and Nirvana doing "do you love me" were awesome. Plus there was coffin break, the smelly tongues, the hard-ons, skinyard... lots o goodies.
Never heard that one. But you can refer to paragraph one of my original comment for an obvious reason as to why I never heard that one.
You may say they lack talent, but they certainly don't lack makeup. Throw in a confetti cannon and it's good enough for me.
My opinion remains unchanged. Intent means nothing to me. Putting on a good show means nothing. These guys sucked, suck and will suck forever and evermore.
Hate 'em all you like, Bryan, I really don't care. I like stupid songs with cheesy sexual double entendres. I like stupid, anthemic songs about parties. I like flashpots and guitar solos and paens to underage girls. I like the line "I'm just about to ooh yeah!" from 100,000 years. I dunno how one goes about ooh yeahing, but it sounds like fun to me.
Kiss were one of those bands who put out twice as many albums than they should have. Half of their albums were ALWAYS ALWAYS complete filler, and the other half were great rockin' riff fests.
The original "Alive" remains one of my favorite albums of all time. But that's about the ONLY one of their albums I can listen to straight through.
"Alive" is a fucking great album. And you're right, KISS is guilty of padding their albums with shitloads of filler. The worst part of it was that back in the days of LPs, bands would frontload the good stuff on side A and spare you having to listen to the rest if you didn't want to. KISS tended to mix 'em up so couldn't do that, and I've always hated that about their records.
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