Kiss – Monster (2012)
‘I rode the highway to heartache/ I took a trip on the ship of fools’. Right from the off, you know what you’re getting with Kiss: slab upon slab of cheese and cliches served up with so much abandon they actually become empowering. Roll out the pyro, turn up the volume, and be prepared to vomit up the over-indulgence of glitz and glamour, Kiss are back in town with a new record. Why bother in 2012, you ask? Its sales won’t add much to the Ki$$ coffer$, and when the inevitable tour rolls round everyone will only want to hear the ‘70s hits anyway – isn’t ‘Monster’ redundant before its even out of the CD case? Not so – because its remarkably good and more fun than you’ll have with pretty much any record released this year. ‘Hell or Hallelujah’ – the song from which those lines are taken from – is a cracker of a rock ‘n’ roll song, so good in fact that you’ll actually look forward to these make-up drenched pensioners playing it on tour: big chorus, anthemic lyrics, and rock with plenty of roll.
And the fun keeps on coming like a porn star working overtime. ‘Shout Mercy’ is the pure rock ‘n’ roll bubblegum, the Beatles on amphetemines; ‘Back To The Stone Age’ is possessed of the power which only comes from rock music stripped down to its essentials; and ‘Wall of Sound’ – complete with bitchin’ riff – is a sleazy, oozing anthem. This is very much a Stanley record – he pens most of the tunes, sings his balls off, and produces – and the result is that the whole thing sounds HUUUUUGE. Hollywood huge. Indeed, the parallel is more than superficial – both tap straight into the American Dream in being a fiction that we’d all love to live. Take ‘Freak’, for example. On the surface it’s a terrible song: a man in his golden years talking about he’s rejected by society. But dabble on a little Kerry Bruckheimer magic and hey presto, we have a tale of overcoming, a schmaltzy ode to kickin’ ass and takin’ names. And Kiss make you believe it, just for a second. Yes, ‘Monster’ is ridiculous – what band featuring 4 old men in make up singing about sex wouldn’t be – but the fact is that Kiss has always been ridiculous – even in the ‘70s the artifice was as much a part of the art as the music, and, paradoxically, that means that they’ve aged better than all of their peers.
It’s not all great, of course. ‘Long Way Down’ is flatter than a wet fart, the Thayer penned ‘Outta This World’ is laughable enough to make Spinal Tap blush, and Simmons’s ‘Eat Your Heart Out’ is the bravaura of a 60 year old sex pest. But for much of the time here, what you have is a glorious rock record. Kiss never overcomplicate the music, and understand that power comes from feel more than it does finesse. Everything here is amped up to 10 and drenched in sugar and the result is so overpowering that it will blind your eyes to the cracks.