Tag Archives: mark st. john

Music, Reviews

“KISSWORLD – The Best Of KISS” by KISS

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Artist: KISS
Title: “KISSWORLD – The Best Of KISS”
Label: Universal Music
Release Date: 1/26/2019
Genre: Hard Rock
Rating: 4/5

Lo and behold my friends, there is yet another “Greatest Hits” compilation for the legendary masked men of Hard Rock and Heavy Metal – The Hottest Band In The World KISS!!!! This one is entitled “KISSWORLD – The Best Of KISS” and it hit the streets in late January and I’ve finally got a copy of this in my hands. As a lifer in terms of KISS releases, I will be most likely purchasing another 50 hits packages if they come out and my main interest in this one was to see what sort of booklet might be included in the packaging. I’ll return to that topic later on but first let’s take a quick glance at the “20” tracks included on the release. From top to bottom there doesn’t seem to be a single track of “filler” and instead are all go to songs in the now massive KISS catalog. I found it interesting that the release began with “Crazy Crazy Nights” because when that song first hit I was aghast but now so many years later have found it to be enjoyable Rock and Roll.

There aren’t any omissions in terms of the necessary staples as “Love Gun”, “Detroit Rock City”, “Shout It Out Loud” and of course the seminal “Rock and Roll All Nite” are included. The latter one being the original studio track as opposed to the one that we often find on such a release that hails from the essential “Alive” album. There are NO live tracks on this compilation. The post-makeup years are well represented with the most notable tracks from the era such as “Tears Are Falling”, “Lick It Up” and “Heaven’s On Fire” in addition to the album opening “Crazy Crazy Nights”. I think I would have liked to see “Who Wants To Be Lonely” here but it is not.
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Features, PiercingMetal Says

Congratulations to KISS on being America’s #1 Gold Record Award Winning Group Of All Time

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Hey there readers, I wanted to take a couple of minutes out of your day to share a cool piece of press news that I received yesterday at the PiercingMetal Command HQ. It came from those fine folks at Universal Music who we have worked with a great deal over the years and they maintain the KISS catalog which is right up our alley with the band being one of our most favorite things. According to the announcement, KISS has achieved the status of being the #1 Gold Record Award Winning Group of All Time. I’ll let you read the full statement below and then I will surely come back to raise a glass of wine, coffee, beer (depending on your time zone and preference). Here we go.

kiss logo

The Press Release:
KISS – AMERICA’S #1 GOLD RECORD AWARD WINNING GROUP OF ALL TIME: KISS (Rock And Roll Hall of Fame), now celebrating its 40th anniversary, has earned more Gold Album Record Awards than any American band in the history of The Recording Industry Association of America’s (RIAA’s) Gold & Platinum Awards certifications. In the last 41 years, KISS has earned 30 Gold albums (26 KISS albums + 4 Solo Albums that were all released simultaneously — a feat never before achieved by any band.) KISS has 14 Platinum albums, with three albums being multi-Platinum.

“Congratulations to KISS – the new Gold standard for albums by American bands,” said Cary Sherman, Chairman & CEO, RIAA. “What an extraordinary achievement for an enduring band. Forty years later and the band is still rocking. Congratulations to KISS on their Gold album milestone and continued success.”

KISS ADMAT Low-Res
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Film and Television, Pop Culture

“You Wanted The Best, You Got The Best” KISS Documentary Poster Revealed

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I’ve said it time and time again here on the blog as much as the website about my diehard appreciation for that which is KISS and since the teaser poster for their upcoming documentary film was just released and shared across the Interwebs via the mighty Facebook I had to make sure to toss my coins into the fountain, or is that the best use of my two cents? Anyway, here is the poster. Looks sweet yes?

Poster - KISS - You Wanted The Best Film - 2014

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Features, Milestones

Happy 40th Anniversary to KISS!!!! (1/30/1973-1/30/2013)

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Today marks the 40th Anniversary of the first gig of the legendary KISS; Yep, on this day back in January of 1973, Gene Simmons, Paul Stanley, Peter Criss and Ace Frehley performed together under this name for a mere handful of people at a place known as the Popcorn Club. This venue would later be renamed to The Coventry which is very familiar to those who know their KISStory. The band wore garish makeup and each of them was a character of their own design with The Demon, The Starchild, The Cat and the Space Ace and it was a shock to the Rock and Roll system of the time when they all appeared together in this manner.
kiss logo
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Music, Reviews

“Discoveries” by KISS

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Artist: KISS
Title: “Discoveries”
Label: Island/Mercury Records
Release Date: 7/8/2008
Genre: Hard Rock
Rating: 3/5

In 2011 I reviewed a KISS “Best Of” compilation called “45: The Complete Collection” and while it was a nice grouping of tunes it was by no means “complete”. It was available as a digital only release which was great for the new generation of music fans who are glued to their iPods or Droid devices and keep connected to their music that way. With that being the case I never expected to find this collection broken up into three separate products now entitled “Favorites”, “Classics” and “Discoveries”. I took my original text about the complete release and expanded upon it lightly for the sake of this review.

This third and final grouping of tracks from the original larger release is actually very interesting to see placed all together based on the fact that so many of the tunes have videos for them. Unless I am mistaken, fourteen of the fifteen inclusions all had videos. That is pretty awesome to find being the case. Tune wise we get two selections from the now unmasked men with “Lick It Up” and three from “Asylum”. There’s two from “Crazy Nights” which is now an album that brings a smile even if it didn’t at the initial time of release and the “hit” from the “Smashes, Thrashes, Hits” compilation that the boys released in the late 80’s. We touch both “Revenge” and “Psycho Circus” with two tracks apiece and I think that the second track from each could have been swapped for something else in my humble opinion. Another interesting aspect of this is the fact that the band had been unmasked during almost all of the tunes until when they give us “Psycho Circus”. By the time that song was historically done, the original members had reunited and once again donned their famous face paint. Of course since then a lot more has changed. Such is life in Rock and Roll.
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