From: Anders Stalsby

I've been a KISS fan since 1976 and I must say that I've really looked forward to hearing a new album by the reunited original line-up of KISS. If I could have had my wish I would have wanted KISS to record a straightforward rock 'n' roll album in the spirit of Rock And Roll Over. No over the top production, just well written songs recorded the way they are. I was of course aware that KISS (or Gene&Paul) had no intention of doing this, so I didn't expect Psycho Circus to be an album like that. But now you know in what direction this review will be biased...

What KISS (and, I guess, Polygram) want is to release an album that will take them back to double platinum success. And who can blame them? I guess it is a lot more fun receiving platinum awards than releasing an album that the hard core KISS fans love but only sell 300,000 copies. I don't think the concept of musical integrity has ever existed in the minds of Gene&Paul... I'm not quite sure they went about it the right way to achieve renewed commercial success, though. This is 1998, after all, not 1987.

I didn't really want to hear anything from Psycho Circus until the album was released. What you can hear via the Internet in crappy sound quality doesn't really do the music justice. But when a friend of mine told me that the new stuff wasn't very impressing I couldn't resist checking whether he was right or not.

What I have heard so far is only pieces of the songs in poor sound quality, so I can't comment on the guitar sound or anything like that. And I most definitively won't get into the debate concerning whether Peter plays drums on the album or not. On the tape I've listened to the drums are hardly audible. What I can hear, however, is the melodies and the basic guitar riffs. Here are my views after listening a dozen times.

The songs

Psycho Circus (Stanley/Cuomo)
Good intro, a bit of circus music. The excitement grows. And here we go: YEEEEAAAAHHH!!! But hey, what is this? Disappointment! This riff is lame; it sounds like something John Mellencamp could have written. Anyway, on to the verse, this is better. Paul doesn't sound very happy, though. Hasn't he gotten over his COS-depression yet? Let's hope for a great chorus! Oh no, not that lame riff again! And the vocals, "You're in the psyyyyyyyyyy". What is this? My native language may not be English, but I don't think you need to speak English as your first language to realize that this is silly. This song reminds me of something else in the KISS songbook, but what? Oh, now I know: Hide Your Heart. The chorus isn't "ah ah ah hey hey hey doo doo doo", but not far from it. The general feel of the song is very much the same as Hide Your Heart. There's something D.Child/D.Warren/H.Knight-ish about this that I sure don't like. The song isn't all bad, though. The verse is OK and the solo is great. Th ere's no doubt that The Ace is back! The "empty" part after the solo makes the song lose whatever power it had gathered up, though. And then that chorus again...

Within (Simmons)
On to the next song. Hmm, did I put COS on by mistake? This sure sounds like a left over from the COS-sessions, similar in style to a mix between Seduction Of The Innocent and In My Head but a much weaker song. The chorus is OK though, quite powerful. The song isn't bad but it shouldn't be on the KISS Reunion Album. I Pledge Allegiance (Stanley/Cuomo/Knight)
Hey, now they're on to something! I like this! Poppy and commercial but a good and catchy song. At least Paul doesn't sound depressed on this one. The chorus reminds me of UH! All Night. Again, the guitar solo is great (and surprisingly long!). If you are to believe what you read on the Internet, this song is co-written by Holly Knight (Holly Knight?! Really? Hey, wake up Stanley, this is 1998 not 1987!) and that makes me slightly sick. The Knight-vibe isn't too obvious on this song, though, whi ch is a relief! Worse is yet to come...

Into The Void (Frehley/Cochran)
Ah, Mr. Frehley, at last! I was fearing that Ace wouldn't get a single song on this album since Bruce Fairbairn was said to choose what tracks would make the album. But, here it is, only one song but a big one! This song reminds me of Ace's contribut ions on Unmasked. And I don't mean that as a bad thing. On an otherwise rather weak album Ace's three songs really stood out and were all high quality compositions. (Oh, can you remember a time long ago when you could find three songs written by Ace Frehley on a KISS album?) The main riff is in the good old Frehley tradition of We Got Your Rock, Insane, Back To School and Take Me To The City. The chorus is pure pop, catchy as hell and thoroughly enjoyable. The guitar solo is great (Did I say that before?)! From what I have heard so far, Ace is in great form. His guitar playing is as smokin' as ever. There are, however, no super-simple classic Ace-solos reminiscent of the first three KISS albums. I thought Gene&Paul would have wanted him to play at least one solo like that.

We Are One (Simmons)
I have only heard the end chorus of this song so I can't say too much about it, except that I don't like the chorus much... The vocals are way too sweet; this is not the song you would expect from the Demon. Well, maybe the verses are great...

You Wanted The Best (Simmons)
This is the most traditional Simmons song on the album despite the fact that all four guys sing a line or two on it. These divided lyrics is a good gimmick. It's just too bad that the song isn't very strong. The verses are simple but acceptable. But the chorus is close to awful and reminds me of Fits Like A Glove.

Raise Your Glasses (Stanley/Cuomo/Knight)
This is Holly Knight in the most dreaded form. A 100 percent hair band song. It sure doesn't make me feel like celebrating. Paul is way out of line with a song like this, but I guess Fairbairn encouraged him. This is not a bad written song in itself, but it is so wrong for this album. The song is kind of pleasant, its closest relative in the KISS songbook being Turn On The Night from Crazy Nights. And just like it can be nice to listen to Turn On The Night once in a while, I might want to listen to this song from time to time. It's just that the song sounds so dated. This song should not be on this album period.

I Finally Found My Way (Stanley/Ezrin)
At least Peter Criss was given a song to sing. This is not the eighties power ballad you might fear since it's written by Paul. Instead, it's a laid back beautiful song of the type you might expect to find on a solo album by Peter Criss. It would have fitted perfectly on Let Me Rock You. This Lennon-esque song is by no means the best ballad ever written, but it's absolutely good enough. And I like it! Peter's vocals are fantastic. At 50, he's a much better singer than when he was 30.

Dreamin' (Stanley/Kulick)
Tell me I'm dreaming. Tell me this is just a nightmare. This can't be a song on the 1998 KISS Reunion Album, can it? Paul is depressed again. The music sounds very much like a leftover from the Animalize-sessions. It's a typical mid-eighties boring half ballad heavy metal song. The basic chords of the song are the most overused chords in heavy metal. Paul co-wrote this with Bruce Kulick (Why Bruce when Mr. Frehley was available?) and it's obvious that Bruce used his best song ideas on his own album... This song should have been put to rest at a very early stage during the recording sessions. The "Oh oooooh oooh"-bit in the chorus gives me an allergic reaction. It's so eighties, so dated. Paul's sings this song in his most annoying eighties manner, wailing and whining, really stretching the words. Paul is one of my all-time favorite singers, but he's also one of my least favorite singers. It all depends on how he sings. This can be described as the difference between shouting and screaming. In the seventies, he would mostly shout out his lyrics in a cocky street-tough manner. In the eighties, he unfortunately found out that his voice had a whole different range and he started to scream his lyrics. A good (or, more accurately, bad) example is Get All You Can Take on Animalize. Paul screams his way all through the song and it gets almost impossible to listen to it. A good example of Paul's two distinctively different styles can be found in the first verse of Take It Off from Revenge. Compare the first two lines to last two lines! On Psycho Circus, Paul's vocals are generally somewhere in-between. There's way too much screaming, as in Dreamin', but when he calms down a bit his vocals are quite good.

Journey Of 1,000 Years (Simmons)
A leftover from The Elder? I have only heard a part of this song so I can't say much about the song structure. The general feel of the song, though, is much in the same vein as Only You, Under The Rose and A World Without Heroes. This epic from Gene closes the album and I'm puzzled. Maybe it's a good song, but it's not a good song for this album.

General impressions

All in all, I think only three of these ten songs are worthy of being on this KISS album. I Pledge Allegiance and Into The Void are great catchy rockers and I Finally Found My Way is made great by Peter's singing. Psycho Circus and You Wanted The Best could be saved by better choruses. The other five songs should not come near this album. This album cannot be given more than two stars out of five.

Are you tired of hearing me complaining? Stop reading, because here's more!

A lot on this album reminds me of KISS in the eighties. Some things remind me of COS. But almost nothing reminds me of KISS in the seventies. That means that something is very wrong here! The album is quite varied. It has songs in many different styles. This need not be a bad thing. The songs on Destroyer were in just as many styles and that sure was a great album. It's just that many of these songs shoot off in the wrong directions. They just don't hit the target. Some songs hit below the target, some hit to the left and some hit to the right. There are songs on the album that are too glossy and commercial and there are songs that are too dark and gloomy, but there are not many songs in the "true KISS spirit" as I interpret it.

This album leaves me kind of low-spirited. Maybe my expectations were too high, but it's also due to the fact that many songs have a minor key-feel instead of a major key-feel to them. Great Expectations is uplifting, Journey Of 1,000 Years is not. I Stole Your Love makes me happy, Psycho Circus doesn't. Before this album was recorded, I read an interview where Paul were asked if they would be able to write party songs again after COS. Paul answered that with Ace and Peter back in the band that would happen automatically. Well, obviously it didn't...

Most of the songs are surprisingly weak. I have jokingly referred to some of them as leftovers from earlier albums. It surprises me that playing those old seventies KISS songs more or less every night for a year during the Reunion Tour hasn't rubbed off on the songwriting. There's also a lot I don't understand about the principles of songwriting for this album. Before the album was recorded I read an interview where Gene was asked if they would use outside songwriters on this album. Gene said th ey were not. In order to get the chemistry back he said they would keep the writing within the group. Paul was obviously absent during these discussions...

All of Paul's songs are written with outside songwriters. Why on earth has he taken help from a boring eighties hair band songwriter instead of using the capacities of Ace and Peter (and of course Gene)? This shows that Paul hasn't learnt anything from earlier experiences. He still thinks this is the eighties, or otherwise, he uses very bad advisors. Fairbairn or the record company might have pressured him; saying that they needed more hit oriented songs to break the album. Well, Gene kept his word and didn't take help from outside writers. At least that's something. But he didn't write anything with the other band members either, at least nothing that ended up on the album.

And that leads me to the next question: Why only ten songs? When Revenge was released Paul was asked why they left the song "Do You Wanna Touch Me Now" (or whatever the title was) off the album. Paul answered that that song would only have made the a lbum bigger, not better. The length of a CD is obviously the only area where Gene&Paul don't think that bigger is better. Ten songs on a CD is way too little. And KISS has put at least twelve songs on albums earlier during the CD-era. A few more songs would also have given a little more room for songs written by Ace or Peter, while still satisfying Gene&Paul's egos concerning the number of songs contributed by them.

Gene has said that they would leave the decision of what songs would make the album to Fairbairn in order to avoid conflict within the group. Maybe they have, and Fairbairn's love for songs sounding like it was 1987 is then very evident. I'm sure that there are five songs among those supposedly 10 leftovers that were recorded for the album that I would have preferred on the album.

The fact that there are no songs co-written by Peter on the album is a joke, a bad joke. On those KISS albums where Peter has participated, this hasn't happened since Dressed To Kill. In order to get the balance right on a KISS album I think it's very important to get the right amount of contributions from each member. A KISS album needs the distinctive writing styles of each band member, otherwise it's just another Gene&Paul album with new session musicians. A fair distribution with 12 songs on the album could have been 4 or 5 songs mainly written by Paul (one of them sung by Peter), 4 mainly written by Gene, 2 or 3 mainly written by Ace and 1 mainly written by Peter.

Another important factor is to get more than one band member to contribute to the writing of some songs. I know that KISS hasn't written many songs together, but by putting parts of songs together that were written by different members you can get the right blend. I would have loved if Paul had written a song melody over a riff written by Ace. It has, after all, happened in KISStory that pieces written by Ace and Paul have been put together, e.g. Comin' Home and Flaming Youth.

Now, back to the annoying lack of Peter songwriting credits: The least Paul could have done is let Peter write some of the lyrics to I Finally Found My Way and given him a co-writing credit. Peter may not be a big lyricist, but his lyrics are always so honest that you feel that he really means what he sings. And honesty can sometimes be more important than technical skill to make a song great. Another thing that I don't understand is, as you may already have realized, the choice of producer. Why hire a boring eighties producer? My suggestion would have been one of these two: 1. Using Bob Ezrin (which they did to some extent) in pre-production, helping out with arrangements and writing. Not on Ace's songs of course, since Ace doesn't like Ezrin. Then having Eddie Kramer recording and mixing the album.
2. Using a young and hungry producer that grew up listening to the first eight KISS albums and thereby would have an understanding of what KISS is about.

Using Bruce Fairbairn is something of a worst case scenario. He's a guy that was successful in helping another group with their commercial come back ten years ago but he's obviously stuck in the music of that era. This is, however, of course not the first time KISS have used a big name producer hoping that it would make the album successful. Ron Nevison on Crazy Nights is one example. Bob Ezrin, admittedly, on Destroyer is another. Well, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't...

To end this review, here's another thing that annoys me: The lyrical content. What's wrong with sex songs? Before COS, the subject of 80 percent of KISS' songs was sex, or love if you will, in one form or another. By suddenly making this subject a taboo, it's obvious that they don't have much else to sing about. What we get here is mainly rewritings of the lyrics from COS or lyrics about how great rock and KISS are. It gets a bit tedious. The Rolling Stones show that you can write about sex in your fifties and not sound silly. You don't have to write the lyrics the same way as when you were 25, but it's still a relevant subject.

So am I complaining just for the sake of it? Do I take this too seriously? It's only a rock album after all and nothing really important. Yeah, well, maybe. These are only my opinions and everyone has to make up their own mind about this album. Maybe you will love it! And maybe I will enjoy the album a lot more when I get to hear the complete songs in good sound quality, especially now when my expectations are lowered. Let's hope so! The tour will be great anyhow!

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