REVIEWS:
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KISS is AWFUL. So awful, that I have rewarded the greatest title of them all: MOST OVERRATED ROCK BAND, EVERRRRRR. They only influenced the horrible Twisted Sister.
(reviewed by Robert Grazer)
Why review Kiss? Just because, you know, whatever I personally think about Kiss, I can't deny their popularity. Kiss have had over thirty albums that have gone to gold status or higher. Thirty gold albums! And this was their first. And this is most likely their best. Why? Well, with a generic 'arena rock' band like this the formula is always best the first time around. It hasn't gotten old and tired yet, so there is some stuff to actually enjoy a teeny little bit on this album. The first five tracks are all okay (though just okay and nothing more at all), so I don't start feeling sick until "Kissin' Time." Even then the guitar solo in "Kissin' Time" is not all that bad, though every other Kiss guitar solo sounds almost exactly like it. "Cold Gin" might be the best on the album since it's the catchiest and has the least annoying vocal work.
The rest are just generally unoffensive and mediocre, with the exception of one. The final entry "Black Diamond" is atrocious, down near the lowest level of songs possible. What kind of crappy chorus is that anyway? "Ooooh, Black Diamond!" Not to mention the miserable attempt at drama in the solo and the even less successful attempt to put some emotion into the music in the intro and outro. I've seen a lot of Kiss fans call this one the best on the album, but I can't hear it as anything even remotely close to decent at all. Why not call one of the others here the best, like "Strutter" or "Cold Gin" or anything except that one! Ick. So, all in all we get a bunch of mediocrity, a couple bad tunes and one worthless piece of crap ugly garbage song? Sounds like the best Kiss could do.
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This is probably the band's best album with the original line-up, I can only think of one bad song on the whole album, "Kissin' Time", which is a cover anyway.
...And I am one of those fans who thinks "Black Diamond" is the best song here, Peter Criss' raspy vocals sound excellent on this track. This is a classic, some of Kiss' best songs are here. If you don't like this album, chances are you won't like any of the rest.
(reviewed by Robert Grazer)
There have been only a handful of albums with and extreme combination of atrocious lyrics, pathetic vocals, zero-talent playing, and generic tunes on every single song, one after another. Kiss' second, Hotter Than Hell, is one of these albums. This album is no more than simply terrible. There are a couple places on the album where the music can be called decent, like the beginning of the opening "Got To Choose," when the catchy riff is repeated a few times. The singing kills that though, and by the end of the song the riff becomes of the most burned out pieces of music in history. Following that is "Parasite," a passable harder number, though nearly destroyed by the pathetic lyrics and horrid singing. There. I've mentioned a couple of the better sides to this album.
But now....ugh. I'll only name a couple of the other tracks here, since only a couple are even worth a quick mention. "Goin' Blind" is a crappy generic ballad. "Comin' Home" is a crappy upbeat rocker. Okay, I can say a little bit more than that. How about this: "Goin' Blind" is PAINFUL to listen to. One of the five or so worst ballads ever written for sure. No feeling or emotion at all on that one, and the chorus is annoying beyond words. The title track has the worst lyrics on the album, and that's no joke; these lyrics are BAD. "Hot, hot, hotter than hell, you know she's gonna leave you well done. Hot, hot, hotter than hell, burn you like the midday sun." Honestly people, when you read the words to the chorus there don't you just long for some of Fred Durst's dorky whining? I know I do.
How how how can people like this album? I found this to be one of the most painful listening experiences I have ever had. The only way to avoid being completely scarred was to review this album late at night so I could write all about it and keep myself occupied by yawning in the middle of these songs. My guess is that people who like Kiss just have extremely low standards for music, or just a love of that which is generic. Listening to this makes me feel like giving an album such as Zooropa another chance. I can't quite give this album less than a 2 because of the decent 45 second intro to the opening, but I still find it hard to believe that U2 could make something worse than this. I'm sorry I'm drifting away from the subject. Bottom Line: Avoid Hotter Than Hell at all costs.
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Okay, it's not their greatest work, but I disagree with alot of what your saying about Hotter Than Hell, first off..."Goin' Blind" is a good ballad with some great basswork and the lyrics are great too!
"Parasite" is the best track on the album, and one of the band's heavier tunes.The only thing that really bugs me about this album is the overall sound,I'm surprised you did'nt mention how crappy the drum sounded on this one.
(reviewed by Robert Grazer)
A bit better than Hotter Than Hell, since the riffs are a bit better and there are more decent moments, and yeah, because of "Rock and Roll All Night" too. The generic mega-hit that you're bound to know just from the verses. I'll admit it's catchy, and maybe the best Kiss song I've heard. The opening "Room Service" is actually a decent catchy, energetic, hard rock song as well. And "Ladies In Waiting" isn't all that worse either. They're better than anything on the previous album, that's for sure. Then there's the long intro to "Rock Bottom" that, while extremely repetitive and very simple (see George Starostin's review of this album), is fairly interesting for a little bit of a while, and is also a tad pretty. It turns to complete hell after that when the actual song starts, ruining what might have been a nice, short instrumental, which is actually what I thought was when I first heard it. And to top all of these huge highlights off is "C'mon And Love Me," or rather the first five seconds.
The rotten tracks? Everything else. I won't even go into them at all. It the same way it's been before, awful vocals, awful playing, generic tunes and riffs (I wonder what's used more, the word "generic" in a Kiss review, or the word "lyrics" in a Bob Dylan review), you know what I'm talking about here. There's nothing here quite as painful as "Goin' Blind," but few things are, and many on Dressed To Kill come mighty close to that low, low level.
Look, I've just finished three little Kiss reviews in two days, and usually completed each one while the album was playing for the first time, and read over and improved them a bit on second listen (no Kiss album deserves more than two listens), making sure that my original opinion was correct and all sorts of crap like that. So let me see, in all it must have taken me no more than three hours to come up with these, and there was a lot of that time spent at the All Music Guide and George's Kiss page (not to mention the breaks for some Solitaire and dinner). But I still think I spent more time writing these short reviews than Kiss did penning their songs for all three of these albums combined. If you're in the mood for 'stadium rock' or 'arena rock' you should check out Boston's debut, and not this garbage.
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My guess is you probably were born about the time this album came out or later, which explains your abysmal review of this album. First off, I was probably about 11 or 12 when I first heard it, and now that I'm 35, I can truly say you don't know what the hell you are talking about. Although not a "classic" by any stretch, Dressed To Kill is a tight little package, and a definite step up from the first two KISS albums. If you consider the music that was the norm in '75 (Captain and Tenille, John Denver, Frankie Valli, Barry Manilow, Disco, Olivia Newton John), Dressed To Kill actually starts to sound REAL damn good. "C'mon And Love Me", "Anything For My Baby", "Ladies In Waiting", "Rock Bottom", although not the greatest written songs, are tight little numbers with some kick-axe grooves to them. The band was constantly touring back then, and you could see this, and which would be showcased immortally on their next release, the legendary Alive album, which I noticed you didn't review, or any other album after Dressed To Kill for that matter. But what would you expect from another twenty-something who grew up on his dad's album collection and thimks he knows his shit. Time to go back to school boy!