KISS — Kiss (review)

KISS — Kiss album cover Album · 1974 · Hard Rock Buy this album from MMA partners
3.5/5 ·
Warthur
Kiss, I would argue, have a real claim to being the true inventors of glam metal. The American incarnation of glam rock always tended to be a bit heavier than the UK version, of course, but neither of its other main proponents - Alice Cooper and the New York Dolls - qualified as metal in 1973. Alice Cooper were working in a hard rock mould with the occasional foray into experimental, almost progressive rock territories, whilst the New York Dolls were taking the Stooges playbook and, despite the glam twist, remained solidly in a proto-punk approach.

No, of those three it's Kiss who can claim in 1973 to have fused the fledgling metal genre with the glam craze to create glam metal, and it's on this album that they did it. Many of the tracks would later get superior (and heavier) live renditions on Kiss' Alive series, of course, but the album remains a wonderful 35-minute party on a disc. Keeping away from experimentalism (aside from the slowed-down outro to Black Diamond), the band debut a number of classic cuts that still form key parts of their repertoire - the aforementioned Black Diamond, Strutter, Cold Gin and Deuce.

But that said, the album's far from perfect. Love Theme from Kiss is clearly filler, Kissin' Time (the hastily-written single that the record company demanded) likewise. And Nothin' To Lose and Firehouse are both kind of repetitive and clunky. Still, when the album catches fire it's a great ride. On the whole, it's a good album but if you've got the first Alive album you already own better versions of the best songs on it. It'd be four stars were it not for that filler, and three stars if the filler weren't mercifully brief.
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