Destroyer - Kiss

 

Provenance: Lost to the mists of time. There's no great story behind this one. I suspect I bought it after enjoying Kiss' Double Platinum compilation.

Review: Five-and-a-half years ago I reviewed Destroyed by Sloppy Seconds, which features cover art that sends-up that of Destroyer. Sloppy Seconds were (are?) a scrappy Indianapolis punk band with a cult following. Kiss are globe-bestriding monsters of arena rock. Yet the Sloppy Seconds offering knocks this into a cocked hat. In this instance, the apprentice quite easily bests the master.

On the basis of this (and the other Kiss album I've reviewed so far) I can only conclude that the band's enduring popularity is built squarely on their Alive! series of live recordings. Why? Because in the studio, they were absolute tripe.

There are precisely two listenable songs on Destroyer - opener 'Detroit Rock City' and 'Shout It Out Loud'. The former is a song I could listen to practically any time of day or night, although I could do without the prelude. This consists of a whole minute of your life listening to a fake radio station and the most underpowered car in the world starting up. It sounds like the pump in my fish tank. However, once into the meat of the track it's a different story - a headrush of cool bass riffs, hysterical vocals and drink driving. It even squeezes in Space Ace (maybe?) playing a distinctive, flamenco-tinged solo. It would be reasonable to surmise after this barnstorming opener that the rest of Destroyer is gonna rock.

Well, sorry to dash your cherished hopes 'n' dreams, because it's a precipitous slide downhill thereafter. It's not that the songs are, in and of themselves, terrible, once you remove lyrics, singing and execution from the mix.

To give 'King of the Night Time World' its due, it's about the last time 'Starchild' Paul Stanley sounds relatively human. It would even be a decent song if played by a decent band. But this is Kiss, starring Peter Criss on drums, a guy who makes Moe Tucker sound like Terry Bozzio. Bob Ezrin does his best to bury some of the more rancid stuff, but his 'jazz influenced' hi-hat work is splashed across 'King...' like puttanesca sauce down a crisp white t-shirt. Next up is 'God of Thunder', with Gene Simmons sounding like he's trying to burp up a hot-dog over the a plodding backbeat.

However - at least these are, at a foundational level, heavy rock songs, no matter how ham-handed they've been rendered. What the fuck is 'Great Expectations'? It's sopping wet, with a syrupy string arrangement and underscored by a horrid, shrill choir. I don't know what it's trying to achieve other than being the most suck-ass thing ever committed to vinyl; and even then it's a failure, because it's not even the biggest pile of horseshit on Destroyer. 'Flaming Youth' is okay, I guess, if you like Sweet b-sides sung by Paul Lynde. 'Sweet Pain' meanwhile just sounds inept; how Bob Ezrin heard this and thought "yeah, that sounds like four guys all playing in the same room at the same time" is a mystery.

At least there is some respite in the form of the aforementioned 'Shout It Out Loud', which is gloriously dumb, as opposed to plain dumb - a big, hooky invitation to get down and party, Kiss-style! What makes this track pop so much - the maracas? No matter, 'Shout It Out Loud' has got the wow factor - a cool descending piano riff, a chorus so sticky that even the Men In Black would struggle to wipe it from memory and handclaps that seem to be in the right place. It's an island of fun and kineticism in an ocean of sclerosis. Perhaps Destroyer finishes on a flourish..

Hol' up, there, pard'ner! This here's 'Beth' country! Yes, 'Beth', winner of a People's Choice Award in 1977, is a proper stinker. It makes 'Great Expectations' sound like Napalm Death, a track that Captain and Tennille would've rejected for being too drippy. Peter Criss gets to sing, which could be fine, as he did the lead vocals on actual good song 'Black Diamond'. Alas, here he seems to think he's the next Rod Stewart, croaking away over a sea of piano 'n' strings schmaltz. It's the nadir not only of Destroyer but 1970s rock - which whips ass in general - altogether. Here's a fun call back: 'Beth' made its US television debut on the Paul Lynde Halloween Special, where Kiss performed alongside such luminaries as Florence Henderson, Billy Barty and the Osmonds. (In the interests of fairness and balance, here's Kiss doing a great mime job with 'Detroit Rock City' on the same show.)

'Beth' isn't the final word on Destroyer - that honour goes to 'Do You Love Me?', which is alright-ish but like trying to wash your mouth out with a thimble of Listerine after gargling sewage for three whole minutes. It would play better for me today if I didn't believe Paul Stanley sincerely meant every single narcissistic word. 

Apparently many Kiss fans think Destroyer is the band's best studio album. God almighty! You know, I might actually prefer Hot In The Shade (though I'm in no massive hurry to confirm this). Clearly - and it's obvious from live footage - Kiss are a band best witnessed in person, all their theatrics and whizz-bangs undoubtedly part of the appeal. Hell, I've seen 'em live and it was top entertainment. The bones of good rock songs are there on Destroyer, and they become fully-fleshed in the live arena. Nonetheless when sat at home, listening to their studio efforts, Kiss come across as a pallid, even timid, version of themselves.

The Fat Of The Land - The Prodigy

Provenance: As was the case with ZZ Top's Recycler, my exposure to The Fat of the Land came about thanks to my mum's employment at a library. This time around it wasn't an old chewed-up tape but a CD that had to back, so I recorded it onto cassette along with Led Zeppelin IV.

Why did I request this album? Possibly because of all the brouhaha around third single 'Smack My Bitch Up'. The controversy surrounding the song made its way to Parliament, although the subject of early day motion 565, proposed by newly-minted Labour MP Barry Gardiner, was actually the billboard campaign for the singles. Signatories to this motion included Jeremy Corbyn, John McDonnell and Diane Abbott.

The video, directed by a former drummer from the black metal band Bathory, got the curtain-twitchers of Middle England going too. You can see why. There's a good article on the Louder website about the infamous video's genesis; my favourite detail, given the signatories of the early day motion, is that the model playing the protagonist was called Teresa May. Then there was 'Firestarter', which also got talked about in Parliament on the basis that its video might incite arson, possibly in the same way that Link Wray's 1958 instrumental 'Rumble' was considered a likely tinderbox for street gang violence.

The fuss, especially around 'Firestarter', all seems impossibly tame now. Hell, even dad-rock idiot and cow tongue graftee Gene Simmons recorded a version of 'Firestarter', which you can see here if you truly hate yourself that much.

Review: I'll start by saying I had to listen to something other than the Prodigy to cleanse my palate after checking that Gene Simmons link worked. I just don't think I could've given 'Firestarter' a fair shake otherwise. Anyway, I'm not a massive dance fan, but that's okay, because the Prodigy were always the most 'rock' sounding of that tribe. Certainly, the songs on Fat of the Land follow something closely resembling the rock music I was almost exclusively listening to at the time. Hell, the band did an L7 cover and were even fronted by Keith Flint, a kind of John Carpenter re-imagining of Vyvyan from The Young Ones - that's cool, right? Right?

Yet despite the guitar hooks on 'Breathe' and the rapping on 'Diesel Power', it's unmistakably a confection put together through the tried and tested technique of melding a clutch of samples with some big beats and studio magic. So although 'Smack My Bitch Up' became notorious for its subject matter, its true charms are to be found in its barrelling percussion and Shahin Badar's beautiful, wordless vocal (apparently based off of a track by Sheila Chandra, a remarkable singer in her own right whose voice has sadly succumbed to Burning Mouth Syndrome).

Listening to this from the perspective of 2019, it's odd to hear just how much dynamic range exists in the music. Had I misremembered how loud Fat of the Land was? Or have contemporary studio practices in popular music rendered such notions as dynamics the preserve of nerds and wankers? Much pop music in the present day sounds like it packs out every inch of aural real estate with grey noise, giving the track enough heft that it, no doubt, 'slaps' in one's ear-pods. Friends, on a proper stereo system, it sounds shit. Not Fat of the Land - certainly, 'Serial Thrilla', 'Diesel Power' and 'Fuel My Fire' sound chunky, but there's good definition between all their elements, and a track like 'Funky Shit' really shifts around dynamically. Forgive me for pulling a Horatio Caine here, but you could say...that these songs really 'breathe'.

Oh, and my favourite track on Fat of the Land is the one most obviously wedded to hip-hop, 'Diesel Power'. Kool Keith, who was someone Liam Howlett sampled on a few occasions, spits a wonderfully aggressive lyric over a bombastic, relentless backing track that reeks of smoke and adrenaline. Bottle it up and sell it as psych-up juice - it's what I listen to in the gym if I want to try and lift something moderately heavy more than a few times.

Actually - the closer I listen, the more I'm tempted to say that it's a dance-metal album fused to the spirit of Afrika Bambaataa. Perhaps it's just the bowl of chili I had earlier (a dish which, it has been claimed in a court of law, can mess with your mind) but to me there's a direct thread between Fat of the Land and Bambaataa's seminal Afro-Teutono-futurist floor filler 'Planet Rock'? Fat of the Land might be its gobby, steroid-addled British nephew, but a blood relation nonetheless. Yet Howlett was determinedly pursuing a singular vision, and it's exciting to hear the symphony of cymbals he created in the coda to 'Narayan'; and its only on today's listen that I became fully conscious of the huge heartbeat bass drum at the core of 'Firestarter' (a favourite amongst my generation, not least because an instrumental version featured on the Playstation version of Wipeout 2097 - a kind of cyberpunk Mario Kart if that helps orientate younger readers).

Yeah, Fat of the Land was - and remains - the absolute business. I've got a couple of other Prodigy albums, and they're great; but this is the one where sonic invention is married to a pop sensibility, enabling even a denim 'n' leather bore like me to enjoy it from front to back. A triumph.

Hot In The Shade - Kiss

Provenance: Another piece of shit I paid a quid or two for.

Review: This is rancid even by Kiss' standards. No mucking around this week with some convoluted preamble about how Bruce Kulick got me dumped or whatever, I'm going straight in on this abomination. I realise now that at the time I should've taken one look at that dorky sphinx and spent my money on a can of Pepsi.

I've been suckered by Kiss before now. I got their Double Platinum greatest hits collection as a teenager, which is bulging with catchy, if clunky, nuggets of escapist rock 'n' roll. A band that can come up with glorious trainwrecks like 'Detroit Rock City' and 'Black Diamond' had to be worth a deeper dive, right?

Eh, perhaps not. Certainly not, on the basis of Hot In The Shade (ooh, look, when you make an acronym of the title it spells 'hits' - clever boys! It's also an anagram of 'shit').

Now, even thought Hot In The Shade is an absolute goat rodeo for the most part, there are a couple of songs that aren't as unlistenable as the rest. The opener - 'Rise To It' - is serviceable single-entendre stadium fodder (the gag is that Paul Stanley can maintain an erection) and 'Hide Your Heart' is a hysterical slice of melodrama with a lyric that would embarrass a pre-verbal child, but gets by on conviction and a chorus. That's it. And those are tracks number one and three on a fifteen song slalom down Mt. Shitass. It's January, I've got the heating on low but this album has got me sweating like I'm allergic to it.

Speed up the opening riff to 'Black Diamond', tack on a terrible chorus and complain about paying taxes and you've got the essence of 'Betrayed'. I suppose it would be passable if you've never heard rock music before, or indeed, any music, ever. Try to imagine a song considered too dumb for ZZ Top's Recycler but have Gene Simmons sing it instead, and voila! You've conjured up 'Prisoner of Love'. Can it get worse? Yes. If you've ever wondered what Kiss what sound like if they did a cover of Def Leppard's 'Pour Some Sugar On Me', but somehow made that wretched ditty even more pathetic, then look no further than 'Read My Body'.

It goes on. Hitherto I've been running down the tracks in order, but really once you're past the relative highlight of 'Hide Your Heart' you can pick a song at random and I guarantee you that it'll be so bad that you will feel your IQ dropping in real time. 'Boomerang'? 'Cadillac Dreams'? 'Somewhere Between Heaven and Hell'? 'The Street Giveth and the Street Taketh Away' (yes, really)? This is the kind of music that drives people otherwise disposed towards guitar or drums to rediscover the lost art of mime.

It's not as if Kiss ever did anything revolutionary in their career - musically speaking, that is. 'I Was Made For Loving You' was a bit of a curio as a disco-rock fusion that actually works, but the real genius of Kiss lay in their onstage presentation and the way this was subsequently monetised. Chalk that up to the naked avarice of Gene Simmons and the sheer bloody-mindedness of Paul Stanley, the combination of which ensures Kiss chug on profitably to this day. Yet even though their paleo-rock of the 1970s was derivative and silly, it was distinctive. Probably the biggest crime of Hot In The Shade is that Kiss stopped playing Kiss songs and instead churned out bad parodies of songs whose formulae had proved successful for other bands. I've already mentioned Def Leppard and ZZ Top, but 'Love's A Slap In The Face' could be a Ratt outtake and 'Forever' is, ahem, "inspired" by Cheap Trick's 'The Flame'.

Alright, I've had enough. If I'm going to be charitable, I didn't cringe too much at 'Little Caesar' and whilst 'Silver Spoon' is mostly bobbins I cracked a smile at the "whoa-oh-a-whoah" chorus. If earlier in the decade (Hot In The Shade came out in 1989) Kiss revived flagging interest in their career by unmasking, this is the album that should've seen them committed to a witness protection scheme.  Hot In The Shade saw Kiss trying to play catch-up with the hairspray crowd - a mob that they could legitimately claim to have inspired - and failing miserably, depressingly. Alice Cooper pulled off this ruse (and pretty much everything else, come to think of it) much better. Utterly charmless.