  
The corporate machine and sometimes old school
rock ‘n’ roll act KISS have been partying
every day since 1973, they’ve put out 19
albums since then making this number 20 but before
2009’s “Sonic Boom” there was
nothing for 11 years yet the band have managed
to make tremendous amounts of money simply with
the sheer excessive amount of merchandise they
have put out such as: bobble heads, baby clothes,
glasses, mugs, hats, calendars, comics, wine,
masks, make up, sunglasses, action figures, jewellery,
costumes, blankets and even a morbid product in
the form of children’s urns and caskets…
some of this seems a little excessive but hey,
if it isn’t broke. Nevertheless they’ve
come back with a new album for 2012 and it’s
time to see if they can still actually produce
the same iconic tunes.
It’s always hard for an old band to produce
something the fans can relate to (giving the expression
“you can’t teach an old dogs new tricks”)
because they’ll always be begging for the
hits. With 2009’s “Sonic Boom”
they seemed like they were at least trying valiantly
and had a small degree of success, this time around
they still haven’t reunited the original
line up but have promised to revert back to analogue
technology to really get back the feel of their
70’s prime, you really can’t teach
an old dog new tricks by the look of it. This
however is a good think in this instance as it
gets the raw hard rock feel from back in the times,
really pushes songs like “The Devil Is Me”
up to heights a cleaner sound wouldn’t have
been able to provide.
The lyrics as per usual are embracing the rock
and roll lifestyle to its fullest extent, whilst
songs like “Hell or Hallelujah” and
“Freak” are absolute gems on this
record, but in a comparison to all of those hits
of the past they don’t really stand up to
the same standard but it’s a valiant effort
to give the fans what they love and they cannot
be flawed for that. It’s definitely quite
the impressive album but is it as good a collection
of tracks as the golden age albums? Not even close
but then again it was never going to be, we will
see how we feel in 20 years or so.
3.5/5
Review by James Webb
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