This track features a classic Frehley guitar lead that at one point seems to paraphrase the end of Jimmy Page's solo on "Stairway." And handing the mike off to Criss after the intro was a great idea. Then, someone yells "Hit it!" and with that, they shift gears into lumbering through a fat riff that's much closer in spirit to early Black Sabbath than you tend to get with Kiss. The song starts with Stanley on vocals, accompanied by a baroque-sounding 12-string acoustic guitar pattern. But the thing that really seals the deal here is the unexpected shift in tone as they transition into something softer and more orchestrated on the sort of bridge Pete Townshend might have written in the "Who Sell Out" days.Ī song so cool it inspired a great Replacements cover, "Black Diamond" brings their first self-titled effort to an epic close. Stanley's playful vocal really sells this song, from the opening line: "You really like my limousine / You like the way the wheels roll." And that's all fine and good, but do you love him? Stanley needs to know as the guitars come crashing in to join him on the nagging chorus. It's blessed with one of Kiss' strongest riffs and a sing-along chorus extolling the virtues of gin as "the only thing that keeps us together." And bottom shelf is fine with him. It's definitely of its time, production-wise, but the pop-metal chorus is handled with aplomb and a wall of harmonies Def Leppard may have envied.įrehley, no stranger to drinking, wrote this first-album highlight but didn't feel comfortable singing so he handed off the spotlight to Simmons, who does quite the admirable job. This is one of the newer songs on our playlist, taken from 1983's "Lick It Up," the album on which they first appeared without their legendary makeup. But that sound suits them, Stanley setting the scene with a schoolboyish pout of "It's so sad, livin' at home / Far from the city and the midnight fun / It's so bad, goin' to school / So far from me and the dirty things that we do." The rootsy guitar lead is closer in spirit to the sort of thing you would have gotten from a Rockpile record years later and the chorus manages to keep repeating without wearing out its welcome. The second track on "Destroyer" is closer to power-pop than your typical Kiss song of the time. This first-album highlight has one of the sexier riffs in Kiss' catalog with a Beatlesque breakdown and a chorus hook that finds Stanley pleading, "Get the firehouse 'cause she sets my soul afire / Get the firehouse and the flames keep gettin' higher." It also features sirens and a fire bell, fun sound effects to drive the point home (on one of those hook-and-ladder deals, it seems). The first verse explains why he calls her a parasite lady, the second finds him coming clean with, "I told her things I didn't want to say / I need her and I hope she'll understand." Built on a heavy Led Zeppelin-inspired guitar riff, it only has two verses. This is one of three songs guitarist Ace Frehley contributed to Kiss' second album, although he didn't sing it, handing off the vocal to Simmons. The mood is dramatic, but there's far more sex than drama going on as Stanley sings the praises of the one who pulls the trigger of his love gun, which we're pretty sure he did not buy at Wal-Mart. The title track to Kiss' sixth studio effort was a minor hit at best, but it's been played on every Kiss tour since 1977, the year of its release, and Stanley, who wrote it and sang it, has often said it's one of Kiss' best songs. "To my father, a son / I was raised by demons / Trained to reign as the one." It's a brilliant production as well, full of chatter and clatter and children's voices yelling things you can't quite make out through the wall of reverb. It's kind of weird that a song this associated with bassist Gene Simmons was actually written by Paul Stanley, who handed it off at producer Bob Ezrin's insistence during the sessions for "Destroyer." And Simmons makes good on the gesture with an ominous lead vocal of the sort it would take to lend the proper gravity and conviction to the task at hand. And that still leaves plenty of room for the raucous side of Kiss' catalog, including such chart-rocking triumphs as "Rock and Roll All Nite" and "Calling Dr. It made my list, in ridiculous proximity to "Hard Luck Woman," Peter Criss' other moment in the soft-rock spotlight. But the ballads are pretty divisive, especially "Beth," their highest-charting entry on the Billboard Hot 100. And "Rock and Roll All Nite" is pretty much a shoo-in. "Detroit Rock City" might make every list. You could ask 100 Kiss fans to submit a list of Kiss' greatest songs and no two lists would be the same. You wanted the best, you got the best - or one man's take on what the best of Kiss would sound like.
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