Originally Posted by BastardofYoung

I agree and disagree. On one hand KISS did have some good songs in their early days, but my problem is, that simply they always put the stage show over the actual music they created and that reduced them to no more than a bunch of clowns.

I have nothing against shock rock, and theatrical music, be it KISS, Alice Cooper, Mentors or Marilyn Manson. But when you rely more on a stage show, it is not a signal that they have actual artistic merit behind it. Many times they use a stage show to distract people from realising the music is sub par shlock rock... Rob Zombie and Rammstein are examples of this, take away the fire and big stage show and glitz of it all, and you are left with little substance in the actual music, it is reduced to be a gimmick to sell the music to people who will buy anything based on what they see more than what they hear, and KISS embodies this as well. They were always stage first, music second, always have been always will be, not to mention on top of it they are about the money. You ca pretty much see Gene Simmons eyes turn into dollar signs, he will hawk any product you give him, Pepsi, Shoes anything.

KISS is a marketing band now, they are an image, but they never went past mediocrity in their music. Some of that stuff may be fun to listen to when first getting into the world of rock, but after the novelty of them wears off it becomes boring and one dimensional. The never evolved musically, remained about the image and money.. sold out before they even began.

Not only that, the amount of awful watered down cliche glam metal that spawned from them is reason enough to hate them. Poison, Warrent and all that garbage owe so much to KISS. Glam metal is a disgrace, always will be. Luckily apart from ocassional nostalgia overload from people it is laregely forgotten, and can only continue to be forgotten more and more... thankfully.

Gene Simmons is more about the sex, thinking he is a hot shot for sleeping with over 5000 woman or whatever, and thinks that is his feat... essentially that is all KISS every went into music for. They were always never anything special, but at that time.. didn't matter... you could walk into your high school with a guitar, not even knowing to play it and you would have girls flocking around you and wantting to get with you because of the image of having a guitar... hence KISS and what they did.

Do I think they KISS had a few good songs, yeah... but good is about all, never great. For everyone one good song, they had 20 equally awful ones on top of it.