Replay: KISS, Destroyer, 1976

It might seem difficult to believe for someone who wasn't there, but KISS once was the world's most popular rock band. For a few years in the late 1970s, KISS was at the top of the music heap, scoring platinum albums and selling out stadiums all over the planet. There also was a huge fan club (the KISS Army), comic books and a made-for-TV movie.

Most of KISS' success hinged on its marketing savvy, from the ubiquitous kabuki makeup to dramatic stage antics such as breathing fire and spitting blood. But beneath the hype, KISS was a real rock band. Gene Simmons, Paul Stanley, Ace Frehley and Peter Criss had a knack for writing catchy pop rock songs.

KISS reached its creative peak with its 1976 album, Destroyer. Produced by legendary Bob Ezrin (Pink Floyd's The Wall, Lou Reed's Berlin), Destroyer is quintessential KISS--hard-driving arena anthems along with a melancholy ballad ("Beth") that dominated the airwaves for months.

Destroyer opens with "Detroit Rock City," the album's signature track. The first thing you hear is someone doing dishes while listening to the radio in his home. The radio reports on a head-on collision. Then the person leaves the house, gets in his car, starts the engine, flips on the stereo (which plays KISS' "Rock and Roll All Night") and takes off. The song kicks in next, telling a story of a guy speeding to make a "midnight show" and suddenly seeing a big truck coming at him ("I got to laugh/ because I know I'm gonna die"). The musically rich song (at least for KISS) builds to a crescendo when we hear, you guessed it, the skid and crunch of a head-on collision. Cheesy, perhaps, but well put together.

The artsy notions of "Detroit Rock City" are continued with the Sabbath-esque "God of Thunder," on which the long-tongued Simmons delivers a devilishly baritone vocal in which he promises, among other things, to "slowly rob you of your virgin soul." Probably the album's strongest song is "Shout It Out Loud," which holds up 30 years later, but "Great Expectations" and "Sweet Pain" are better off forgotten. I retain a soft spot for the album closer, "Do You Love Me?," which raises an age-old question from the perspective of a celebrity.

KISS produced a ton of crap over the years, but at least half of Destroyer confirms there was some talent behind the cartoon faãade.--Geoff Schumacher