The Scientific Method…..Meets Kiss (I)

by Keith in Album Reviews, Editorials, Opinion Posts

I’m about to take myself back to sixth grade… in two different ways. The first way is the
kid listening to ‘Creatures of the Night’ by Kiss who stared at that album cover, loved how freaking huge those drums at the beginning of ‘I love it Loud were’ and swore the eyes on the album cover glowed in the dark. The second is the kid who talked too loud in science class and got sent to the principal’s office…. a lot. Yet, despite my mouth running non-stop I somehow managed to pick up and remember The Scientific Method. You remember it, right? If not, it’s time to dust off those cobwebs.

This is only Part 1 of what will probably be a 4-part blog, in the Spirit of Kiss’s IV ‘Alive’ albums. So if you don’t like Kiss – sorry. If you do, it’s time to start dropping the science. This whole thing started a week ago when I broke out some Kiss records, which is kind of a semi-annual rite of mine I guess. As I was listening to random songs, I came to a somewhat shocking conclusion as to what I thought the greatest Kiss album was. And honestly, I was going to write a blog titled “The greatest Kiss album is…. (that album)”. But something this important needs to have science as its co-pilot, which is why we had to drop the heavy heavy science here. In the pure spirit of the Scientific Method, I don’t know what the conclusion is going to be here, so let’s get to it!

Step 1: Ask a Question.

What is the greatest Kiss album?

Step 2: Do Background Research.

The listening I did last week serves as the background research here – I made my own personal ‘complement’ disc to ‘Double Platinum’, which is pretty much Kiss’s greatest hits from 1974-1978 (their best period). It’s Kiss’s ‘Legend’, if that makes sense. Listening to both discs allows me to consider 16 albums from Kiss for ‘the greatest ever’ – their first 16 (Kiss through Creatures of the Night). Yes, this includes the solo albums, which I actually think are pretty good. But it doesn’t include anything after that, mainly because most of those albums are horrible. You can read cases for ‘Revenge’ (the song Unholy is great, the rest of the album is just….yikes) and ‘Carnival of Souls’ (envelope-pushing by Kiss standards, but not a classic) out there, but I’m not going to consider them here, especially since…well, I’ll leave that part for Step 4.

Step 3: Construct a Hypothesis.

So remember the blog I almost wrote instead of this? It was going to say “The Greatest Kiss album is….Unmasked“. Really. And I felt pretty good about it too, I think their songwriting is good and shows a maturity you didn’t see on albums before OR after. But bold
statements like that must be backed up.

Step 4: Test Your Hypothesis by Doing an Experiment.
And here comes the experiment. I’m going to listen to EVERY song on these 16 albums by Kiss.
No songs spared! This is Kiss immersion therapy, and I’m not sure I can handle it – since I want to do it in as short a time as possible, but that’s why I’m here, isn’t it? To do insanely stupid crap like this for people to read. So with that said, let’s get to….

Step 5: Analyze Your Data and Draw a Conclusion.

I’m going to report results from each album, in chronological order, and go through all 16. Let’s get to it!

Kiss (1974)

Damn, I already feel stupid on the ‘Unmasked’ thing. Sure I like it, but this album has not four, not five, but SIX ‘classic’ songs on it (Strutter, Firehouse, Cold Gin, Deuce, 100k years, Black Diamond). And the other four songs are all good – except Kissin Time – with the especially cool ‘Let Me know’ buried in obscurity on the record – if you don’t think it’s that cool, wait until the end riff when the tempo changes late in the song. An incredibly solid album.

So, the experiment has begun. As I post this I still have 15 albums to go. Here’s hoping you hang around with me to see what happens!