Black Sheep Albums: Kiss' The Elder
Kiss mildly scared me as a child. Their evil Kabuki warrior make-up and devil music was a recipe for disaster, as I already hated clowns. By chance I saw their film, Kiss Meets the Phantom, which is a modern remake of The Phantom of the Opera, with a bunch of changes, most importantly Kiss running around an amusement park which is being terrorized by an evil scientist. That was another thing that scared me: amusement parks, and fairs. From a very early age, I had an innate, visceral hatred of carnies and circus people, always imagining that behind the facade of sawdust and elephant piss there were dirty miscreants spiraling down to new depths of decadence, like that "Rectum" bar at the end of the French movie Irreversible.
Eventually, I did get into Kiss, but it was much later. They're essentially a rock, or hard rock, band, that flirted a few times with heavy metal (Creatures of the Night is a metal album, an amazingly good one, and has possibly the best drum sound ever recorded), but it can be hard to take them seriously with all the pyrotechnics and facepaint. Though highly enjoyable, I never found them to be larger than life, and certainly not supernatural. Not surprisingly, their mid 80's albums, where they ditched the make-up, have quite a bit of substance, and possibly more maturity on display than their seminal output.
Kiss has always been about the money, a fact that Gene Simmons is loathe to deny, and he and Paul Stanley have done some really embarrassing things to get that money, like a burned out stripper down on luck. Most of this experimentation is confined to their marketing, but Kiss' music is by no means immune. Their fourth album, Destroyer, was a real departure from pure rock sounds, with added threatrics from Pink Floyd/Alice Cooper producer Bob Ezrin, but it yeilded such songs as "Detroit Rock City" and "God of Thunder." They returned to their roots for two good rock albums, before putting out two disco oriented albums, Dynasty and Unmasked. In the 80's, they combined strong pop sensibilities to their sexual innuendos for a winning combination.
Just like that burned out stripper, it's hard to turn your eyes away from this freakshow, because you have no idea to what depths they'll plunge next. Dynasty was the first Kiss album I bought, because everyone said it was a terrible, terrible disco album. Disco it is, but it's also fun, silly, and catchy as all hell. Unamasked is awash in rhinestone glare and satin, a half-assed copy of Dynasty, and even more amusing. How they didn't manage to alienate their fanbase after that is a miracle, but then Kiss did the unthinkable and unleashed this. This is where the burned out stipper heads south of the border, the place where all strippers go to die. Kiss basically becomes the house band for the "Rectum."
You may notice the title of the album is actually Music From the Elder. That's because they planned to make a film about some kid fighting evil forces and use this as the soundtrack. The film never got made, but the story is still told through this--a concept album, with all the cinematic bombast you would expect from Kiss, just in musical form. Sadly, even with Bob Ezrin's help, Kiss are clearly inept in pulling off the complexity called for. Yes, the man who helped shape Pink Floyd's masterpiece The Wall couldn't even save the circus from a fiery death at the hands of rabid deviants.
Bonsoir cheres amis! Nous somme le house band de Club Rectum!
As this is Kiss, you can't ignore their image, so this album is best while looking at picutres of their look at this point. Not as absurd as the super-super disco fab outfits of Unmasked, Kiss dons more refined leather, which actually looks more dubious. And they decided to cut their hair and grease it like Rico Suave, so now they've got some funky ass shithelmets on their painted heads. Jesus Christ, they look like a bunch of French mimes posing as living Bobbleheads. Perhaps this was some sort of retroactive legal action, thought up by Simmons to sue the makers of Bobbleheads for stealing their look?
It starts off with some mideval "fanfare," which is horns and shit like that, ie: not what you're expecting from a band of hard rocking clowns/mimes. The first real song is "I Am Just A Boy," a soft, balladesque track that would find itself on a reject Yes or King Crimson album. I just can't keep from bursting into laughter every time Paul Stanley sings in his falsetto "I am just a boy." Oh, how wrong you are, Paul. If the two previous disco albums didn't make you a man, then this album will thoroughly rend the innocence from thine bones. You should be screaming at the heavens, "is there no god?"
"Odyssey" continues this travesty, and proudly screams mummy, it's time for 5 o'clock afternoon tea and crumpets! Is this English folk music? Did Phil Collins and Genesis record a song and send it to Kiss when drunk? Or was it Chicago? Orchestration and a leading piano riff...seriously, what the fuck is this? I wouldn't be surprised if Gene bought the horn section from Peter Cetera just for this, and promptly subcontracted them out to Burger Barn when failing in their modest task.
"Only You" actually has a heavy riff to it, and could fit in somewhere on Destroyer. Paul Stanely always wrote good serpentine riffs, and this one's got a nice one in the middle. Plus Gene Simmons' vocals are a bit menacing. Next up, it's more proggy weirdness with "Under the Rose." Eric Carr sings this, and when it comes to the chorus, his vocals are doubled to sound like some Satanic church choir--quite effective. It's weird, but at least sounds somewhat heavy.
The meat of the album are the two strongest songs: "The Oath" and "A World Without Heroes." "The Oath" is the heaviest song on here, and does not disappoint. Some death metal band covered it a while ago, and it is a heavy song, with double bass and a massive riff to begin with, so that worked out just fine. And it is a damn good song, just sitting amid a bunch of misfits and freaks. "A World Without Heroes" holds up the other end of the spectrum: a delicate ballad with heartfelt lyrics by Gene Simmons...wait, this should suck! Ah, but it doesn't, for that is the Elder's magic! "The Oath" is a hulking barbarian, and "A World Without Heroes" is the fair maiden that is his bounty and booty. Kiss songs for him and her, brought to you by The Elder.
At this point in Kiss' career, Ace Frehley was probably drinking paint thinner and snorting caustic soda, but he still manages to get two hard rocking songs on here: "Dark Light" and "Escape from the Island." The latter is an instrumental with bouncy jungle beats and an extended solo, but which ultimately leads us nowhere.
This being Kiss, they had no problem in using outside writers. Lou Reed came in and worked on "Dark Light" as well as "Mr. Blackwell," which is a weird poppy number, corny as all hell. Just bass, drums, and Gene for the most part. He even tells Mr. Blackwell to "go to hell," at the end. Did you see what he did there? It rhymes? You see? DO YOU SEE?
Oh dear god, is this really necessary?
Bob Ezrin himself penned the last track with Gene Simmons, the anthemic "I," which sounds 100% like Kiss. A bouncy riff, vocals traded off between members, and a gang chorus to end the album, "I" lets you know that you have in fact listened to a Kiss album. But hold on for the crowning moment...there's a little dialogue between the Elders amid more horns and fanfare. It sounds like the Lemmiwinks sequence from South Park with a New York hot dog vendor. And with that, the Elder leaves you with the lingering taste of hot dogs, doo-doo walls, and shredded childhood dreams. Only god knows how many Kiss fans went permanently insane after listening to this. Their idols went from firebreathing monsters to doing the unspeakable in Tijuana for a handful of greasy pesos.
The best points of the whole album are easily Ace Frehley's solos. Each song features a smooth, expressive solo or two, which fit in seamlessly with the music. Another good point is Eric Carr's drumming; it's never too complicated, and though the production robs it of its thunder, it's tasteful and to the point. Peter Criss is a terrible, terrible drummer, so Kiss actually made a big improvement by getting Eric Carr on board.
The Elder is Kiss trying every goddamn trick in the book, failing at a lot of it , but it fails in ways that are so ridiculous that they're hilarious. When it does something effective, it's unexpected, like "A World Without Heroes." Say what you want about Kiss being money whores, they never hid their capitalist ambitions, and never hold back in bashing this, amoung other failed cash grabs.
The Elder may be horribly inconsistent, a blasphemy to rock music, and a failure of unprecedented nature, but you can't say that it's not frighteningly engrossing. It's bad enough as it is, and if viewed in context amoung their body of work, it's mindnumbingly awkward, a horribly deformed circus freak runt that could never survive outside of a floating globe of amniotic fluid. Miraculously, Kiss immidiately rose from the ashes of this plane crash and unleashed their best album, Creatures of the Night. So maybe there are actually firebreathing monsters, after all...no human should withstand career suicide of this magnitude.
