KISS
Sonic Boom
(Kiss Records [North America]/Roadrunner [elsewhere])
Available as a 2CD/DVD set in North America and as a single CD elsewhere.
Rating: 
Kiss fans have had every right to be skeptical over the past decade or so. The band’s last studio album, Psycho Circus, was really a “reunion” album with Ace Frehley and Peter Criss that had very little Ace Frehley and Peter Criss on it. They embarked on a “farewell tour” at the turn of the century that turned out not to be a farewell after all. And – most damningly – after the reluctant-to-repeat-himself Ace Frehley chose to depart the band in order to decompress before resuming his solo career, Gene Simmons made the controversial decision to replace the influential guitarist with ex-Black & Blue guitarist and sometime Simmons lackey Tommy Thayer without initially telling the public. (Peter Criss, “the most miserable man on the planet” according to Simmons, was already on the shitlist of his ex-bandmates during the so-called farewell tour and was replaced by Eric Singer.) Follow all that up with Simmons claiming in his autobiography that there was no longer a market for a new Kiss studio LP, and it’s understandable to think why an album called Sonic Boom might easily be dismissed – like some fans who heard a leak of the album on the heels of the release of Frehley’s Anomaly album already did – as sonic bunk.
But in the wake of Paul Stanley recording a follow-up to his 1978 solo album (and touring behind it) and Frehley working on Anomaly since 2007, it probably doesn’t take an Einstein to presume that Simmons was full of shit when it came to the Kiss Army wanting new material rather than another repackaging of back catalog.
In advance press when the album’s recording was announced, Stanley – who took the producer’s chair for the project – boasted that the album would have no ballads or outside writers, and would hark back to the band’s “glory days” both musically and sonically. Similar claims (sans the no-ballads comment) had been made about Psycho Circus. Here we go again?
Paul Stanley’s songwriting contributions are, like most Kiss albums since Dynasty onward, amongst the strongest on the album. Advance single “Modern Day Delilah” opens the album with a groove more in line with the band’s mid-80’s work than their classic 70’s releases. “Never Enough” employs a riff not dissimilar to Poison’s “Nothing But A Good Time” – an irony given that Poison had stolen half of the riff to “Calling Dr. Love” for one of their early album tracks. “Danger Us” employs a guitar figure that normally would have been employed with a ZZ Top-ish blues shuffle feel, but instead gets forced against a more rigid, stronger hard rock beat; the song’s chorus lyric of “Danger you, danger me, danger us” smacks more of bad hair-metal cheese rather than Paul’s more clever lyrics, though. “Say Yeah” closes the album out with a combination of Animalize/Asylum riffing and a chorus that borrows heavily and unashamedly from early Beatles (a not unwelcome lift given the band’s open early battle plan was to be a hard rock equivalent).
Gene’s contributions on Kiss albums were pretty much on autopilot after his first solo album, with an average of at least one decent track and the rest of his songs being weak for album after album, until he changed his tack with Revenge and came in with “Unholy” and “Domino”. “I’m An Animal” – co-written with Paul and Tommy Thayer – is the best of Gene’s Sonic Boom songs, merging his onstage makeup persona with the more streetwise attitude of his Revenge compositions. “Russian Roulette” comes in second but threatens to teeter into bad clichés lyrically. “Yes I Know (Nobody’s Perfect)” boasts humorous lyrics but has nothing memorable musically, while “Hot and Cold” sees Gene going into autopilot and is the weakest of his tracks, especially in the lyric department. Lyrics about being a world champion cocksman and banging girls the average age of Morning Musume and AKB48 members doesn’t work very well when you’re a 60-year-old father of two young adults.
Paul and Gene combine both vocal and songwriting duties for “Stand”. It’s always good to hear them write and sing together – they haven’t done it much over the past 20 or so years – but the song, while written well, misses the anthemic status it tries to reach, and comes off like a bad outtake from Hot In The Shade.
Having to cosplay as Ace and Peter’s old stage personas has to be taking some sort of creative and psychic toll on guitarist Tommy Thayer and drummer Eric Singer. Each of the two junior members gets one track apiece on the album. “All For The Glory” – written for Eric by Paul and Gene – is a decent tune but suffers from a weak chorus; Eric should be allowed to sing like himself instead of aping Peter Criss’ raspy blue-eyed soul voice. Thankfully, throughout the album he still drums like himself, straddling the line between the styles of both Criss and the late great Eric Carr perfectly.
Tommy Thayer may be able to ape Ace Frehley’s lead guitar style to a tee – his solos throughout the album prove that. Unfortunately, he can’t write songs like his influential predecessor, not even with Paul’s help. “When Lightning Strikes” in title alone is a bad attempt to claim Ace’s “Space Ace” persona and lightning bolt motifs as his own. To top it off, Tommy can’t sing worth a shit. It is only the apparently need to present and portray a “united front” is why this song is on the album.
While Paul was enthusiastic about the band using analog tape for the Sonic Boom sessions, unfortunately the use of this vintage technology in the 21st century is hit-and-miss. Like the Stooges’ The Weirdness before it, the use of analog tape in a digital age to record a timeless band like Kiss hinders more than helps the album. Analog tape falls apart – and Kiss’ music, even at its weakest, should not sound like it is falling apart. The general production value of Sonic Boom thus ends up lying somewhere between the near-lo-fi sound of their first two albums (produced by the never-heard-from-again Kenny Kerner and Richie Wise) and Kiss’ studio work with Eddie Kramer (Rock and Roll Over and Love Gun) in sound quality. The bonus CD of rerecorded “Kiss Klassics” (released in Japan as Jigoku-Retsuden), apparently recorded digitally a year prior to the Sonic Boom sessions, further underlines this.
Speaking on Kiss Army levels: Is Sonic Boom a much better effort than Psycho Circus? Yes. Is this the direction the band should have gone in musically after Revenge instead of Carnival of Souls? Absolutely. Is it better than much of their 80’s output? Try right next to or above Creatures of the Night, Animalize and Asylum. Can it sit on a level with their classic 70’s discography? Almost – it could see the taillights of their last solid original lineup makeup-era album Love Gun, maybe.
If the band decides to do another album, they should do the following: One, keep the songwriting quality up and then some; Gene in particular should concentrate on his songwriting at the expense of his TV show and other non-Kiss ventures and projects for at least six months straight. Second, they should forget about analog tape and record with ProTools or Logic Pro for the sake of the songs’ clarity; the rerecorded “Deuce” and “Hotter Than Hell” on the bonus CD underline just how much better those songs would have sounded if the band weren’t stuck with horrid producers in bad-sounding studios the first time around. And – onstage makeup and costumes be damned – Singer and Thayer should be allowed to be themselves in the studio, rather than just a kitten and a space-deuce (and don’t ever let Thayer sing lead on a song again unless he works with a vocal coach for at least a year beforehand.) If they don’t do another studio album again, at least Sonic Boom give Kiss’ studio discography a better ending chapter than Psycho Circus.
3½ out of 5 stars.
Author’s note: Since the second disc of re-recorded Kiss classics is only a bonus disc in North America, was recorded a year earlier, and was released in Japan on its own in 2008, it was deliberately not reviewed as part of this release. The bonus DVD in the North American edition was not reviewed due to time constraints.
Entries (RSS)