Metal Reviews

Has anyone heard of this thing? There is a 500 song collection of Unreleased Kiss material circulating. It is easily worth the time and effort to "locate" as well. The songs naturally range from studio perfection to complete bullshit that is horribly written and terribly recorded. Here are some observations of this so far:

*Gene's demos are hilariously awful. Seriously, this is the funniest stuff I've ever heard from Kiss, I wonder if his solo albums are this ridiculous, but people have hated those. Gene really sounds like a drunk trucker singing at a bar somewhere and the instruments are just poorly played. I mean, I get it that they are demos, but Gene didn't put any pride into it.

*There is a lot of throwaway side projects and this set includes the entire discography of some of the shorter lasting acts that only did a handful of singles. Basically the early stuff is bizzarely commercial.

*Kiss were at their best when they didn't play it safe

*Ace's material is outstanding, the guy has a million great riffs it seems. Now I see how I was underestimating him and how Gene and Paul sqaundered his talent.

*Paul Stanley was the original Michael Bolton judging by his material, you know, when the real Michael Bolton was still a hair metal act. My guess is that they could sell Bolton rather than Stanley in the role of middle aged horrible pop MOR huckster. I noticed a song for his solo album that never happened in the late 80's sounded an awful lot like Rush at the time, heavy synths and very pop oriented.

*The quality of the material is about the same for the stuff they didn't issue as what they did. They were the kind of band that wrote far more songs than necessary and for some reasons they may not have picked the best ones for the albums.