Every song on this album is an absolute gem. This album is Kiss at
their peak of creative and compositional ability. It also helped that
it was produced by Bob Ezrin, who had worked with Alice Cooper and the
later mega-platinum album-Pink Floyd's The Wall. It starts with
"Detroit Rock City" and then crashes into "King of the Night Time
World". Then we have the Dark "God of Thunder" and the very orchestral
"Great Expectations". Side two was no slouch either. "Flaming Youth",
Shout it out Loud", and "Do You Love Me?" all contribute fabulously to
create the ultimate Kiss experience. Oh, by the way, this is the album
that yielded Kiss its first hit single "Beth".
Kiss has a number of
compilation CD's out. Double Platinum (1978) covers a wide range of
material and is my favorite Kiss compilation album. My favorite
non-compilation albums from Kiss would be: Dressed to Kill (1975),
Hotter Than Hell (1974) and Kiss (1974). They had another hit in 1979
from the Dynasty album called "I was Made for Loving You". That's when
they began their decline. They released a couple of duds but came back
with an excellent but temporary rebound with the Creatures of the
Night album (1982). That album yielded the title track and one
excellent Gene Simmons tune-"I Love it Loud". A multitude of personnel
changes chased off some of their fans but helped at least to deliver a
variety of material. Most fans prefer the works created by the
original members though. Kiss had some hit songs later but, quite
frankly, I feel that they never measured up to the quality of the
previously mentioned songs or albums and most especially this one. |
