Tag Archives: sonic boom

KISS @ Madison Square Garden (10/10/2009)

kiss logo

Artist: KISS
Venue: Madison Square Garden (New York, NY)
Opener: Buckcherry
Date: 10/10/2009
Label: KISS Records

I don’t think that I have to repeat myself with this but KISS is my very favorite band of them all and while they were not the first music that I was exposed to as a young fan, they were my first official purchase as a consumer with his own money and have always managed to take me away with their concerts and performance mystique. That being said I have been following the band for a couple of decades and watched them go through the numerous changes from makeup to non-makeup, to reunion tour to new members sporting the legacy members’ signature face paint. The reunion lineup in 1996 gave their fans the first new KISS music in years with “Psycho Circus” and the band would tour before and after this release extensively until original members Peter Criss and Ace Frehley were no longer a part of the group. Fast forward a few years and KISS while still active, does its thing with both Eric Singer on drums and Tommy Thayer on lead guitar. The part of this that has come under fire from numerous KISS fanatics is that they are doing so in their familiar faces. The show tonight would be at Madison Square Garden which is a Mecca to a band like KISS and actually also the very first place that I saw them way back on the “Dynasty” tour which also was my very first concert. Thanks Pop. KISS would not only be celebrating the 35th anniversary of the “Alive” album but they would also be hitting the road in support of their newest album “Sonic Boom”. Tonight would also find the band Buckcherry opening up and having never seen them before I wanted to be inside to catch what they were all about.
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KISS Invades Wal-Mart!!! (10/9/2009)

The day was finally here for the world’s KISS fans as their newest CD “Sonic Boom” was unleashed upon the masses and if you lived in the United States or Canada, the recording would be available exclusively at Wal-Mart retailers.  This was pretty big news considering the fact that this is the world’s largest retailer and that some 2800 hundred stores would be setting up special KISS displays to commemorate the occasion.

A Typical Wal-Mart Superstore
A Typical Wal-Mart Superstore

As a long time music fan and purchaser I didn’t find the fact that KISS signed this deal to be all that strange for them to do. Given that we had recently seen similar deals done by the likes of Journey, AC/DC, The Eagles and even Foreigner it seemed to make the most sense at the end of the day. After all, this year alone saw the closure of the Virgin Megastores and Circuit City and this cut two major means of physically purchasing music out of the picture so unless you solely bought your music online you would be searching just a little harder for places to get your latest and greatest releases. The new KISS CD “Sonic Boom” would be a special edition and feature not only new music from the band but also re-recorded classics and a live DVD of concert footage.  Journey did the exact same thing with their “Revelation” album while Foreigner gave us a remixed collection of their classics as opposed to redone ones with “Can’t Slow Down”.   I had to admit that I needed to double check myself in the liner notes on the Foreigner disc as I originally thought I was listening to Kelly Hansen so a dead on Lou Gramm. We reviewed each of these CD’s on PiercingMetal.com when they came out so to read the Journey one click HERE and to see the Foreigner one click HERE if you are curious about what we had to say about them.
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“Sonic Boom” (Deluxe Edition) by KISS

Artist: KISS
Title: “Sonic Boom”
Label: KISS Records
Release Date: 10/16/2009
Genre: Hard Rock
Rating: 4/5

KISS fans have waited eleven years for the band to release a new studio album and “Sonic Boom” is finally here and proves to be a major musical upgrade from their last effort “Psycho Circus”. The aforementioned release was done by a reunited KISS but it didn’t feel as though the songwriting was done together whereas “Sonic Boom” seems to have been written by the band together and recorded in the same fashion. Despite the absence of original members Ace Frehley and Peter Criss who are no longer a part of the equation I really was looking forward to the album and had high expectations of it even if some of my friends chose instead to rally against it. As a musical work, “Sonic Boom” does not bring the listener a continuation of the experiments KISS had done in their career and there is no Disco, no Pop, no Grunge and nothing Alternative about it and instead the album brings you back in time to the days of releases like “Love Gun” or “Rock and Roll Over”. While not comparing the albums to those venerated classics, it is clear that the musical format chosen was intended to be that which made the band popular in the first place and the whole thing starts off with the rocking opener “Modern Day Delilah”. It’s a nice and heavy track that finds Paul taking lead and driving the point home. Most of the record finds Gene and Paul exchanging tracks and to be honest I felt that Paul’s were the strongest musically especially when it came to tunes like “Stand”, “Never Enough”, and “Say Yeah” but Gene does shine just a little bit on his own numbers with “Yes I Know (Nobody’s Perfect)” and “I’m An Animal”. At the end of the day the Paul tracks will be on the listeners lips a little easier and faster than the Gene ones and most would go over well in the concert sense just based on how powerful they are on the recording. I had to say that I felt this album was a lot more even in nature and how it flowed.
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