From: John Emmen

I'm John Emmen from Tilburg, the Netherlands and this is my fan-review of the 'Psycho Circus'-album.

After having heard that KISS was going to record an album with the original (legendary) line-up I got very curious to the result. Now, a couple of days before the officially announced release-date, I first have a chance to see the reult.

The cover is quite spectacular, although I'd rather call it amination (to stay in the vocabulaire of the legendary ButtHead) instead of 3D. For the rest the lay out ain't bad, but could have been better.

Now to the most important thing : the music. I think Psycho Circus is the most diverse album KISS ever recorded. Destroyer also had a bit of that , but not as extreme as with this album. Only, I'm still not shure if that's a good thing or not. At the moment I'm still giving it the benefit of the doubt. The songs themselves are ranging from "not bad"('I pledge allegiance') to superb.

Best songs for me are 'Psycho Circus', 'Within'(Carnival of Souls??), 'Journey of a 1,000 years'(especially the atmosphere and the string-instruments playing the solo-theme from "Psycho Circus') and my favourite song of the album (and already one of my favourite KISS-tunes ever!), the wonderful 'Dreaming'.

The sound overall is very good and all in all I think it's a good record, which in time will prove its real value. It's difficult (and unfair) to compare this cd to the albums from the 70's/early 80's, 'cos times were way different back then and those old albums have the advantage that, besides the music, they bring back a lot of memories from a great period.

Well, now for a rating. I'm grading it somewhere around 80 out of 100, so it's just a real good album and deserves to be on the KISS-discography indeed...

KISS ASYLUM -- KISS Museum News Archive Features Tour Dates Photos