Published on Jun 8, 2006
Few things in the world are as rewarding as cracking
open a beverage and cranking the stereo to 11 to hear a pure rock
album. And when one thinks of the ultimate party rock band, only a
few names come to mind. At the forefront of that list is Kiss.
I never owned any Kiss but I decided to check out
Destroyer because of its supposed classic status. Wrong! I
went into it expecting a good time but was sorely disappointed; the
band’s legendary live shows and energy do not transfer over. What
you hear on Destroyer is a band attempting to fly but seeing
the plane explode on the runway.
“Detroit Rock City” manages to avoid the fate of its
brethren; this is a wide, sweeping, epic rocker of sorts. The
lyrics especially are more serious than usual, detailing the death
of a Kiss fan and his way to a show. The uptempo nature of the
track may bely its meaning, but the song just flat-out rocks
anyway. “Shout It Out Loud” in my opinion is its equal; Gene
Simmons’ bass work on the track is unique, and of course the
refrain is one of the most anthemic in rock history.
I’m unfortunately going to have side with criminal
mastermind Chris Thelen on this one; the album sounds lousy.
Considering that Bob Ezrin, producer for all those wonderful Alice
Cooper albums and Pink Floyd’s The Wall was at the helm, I’m
disappointed. The rock numbers suffer from a muddy sound (“Great
Expectations,”) though a few tracks like “Beth” manage to break
through on pure quality alone. Speaking of “Beth,” you cannot help
but like it. It’s the polar opposite of what Kiss had been to this
point; a sugary, sweet ballad with no guitar? Gah! However, its
sweetness is what saves the track. As far as romantic bonbons go,
it works.
In addition to the production, there’s the little
matter of “Outro.” I believe it was supposed to be the close of the
concert that the main character in “Detroit Rock City” was going to
see, but it’s unclear and poorly conceptualized. “God Of Thunder”
clearly is Kiss trying to be Alice Cooper, and what becomes even
more apparent is that Alice did it better. “Great Expectations” is
an interesting attempt at Kiss creating an epic, but as I mentioned
before it suffers horribly from the production. Let’s just say it’s
not “The Prophet’s Song.”
Destroyer is not a horrible album, and if it
was somebody else I might have rated it higher. However, this is
Kiss; you know, the band behind the Kiss action figures, the Kiss
lunchbox, the Kiss flamethrower etc. They have become bigger than
life as their career has transpired, and I expected the music to
match that. It didn’t.