KISS - "Hotter Than Hell" (1974)

Listening to this album is like hearing an echo from my childhood. KISS was my older brother's favorites the years before adolescence, which means the band is one of my first musical memories. I remember when my brother and three of his friends painted themselves and dressed up like the idols, grabbed their wooden fake guitars, rigged the "drum kit" on the ping-pong table, invited the neighborhood kids and mimed to KISS. The highlight was when the drummer took a few handfuls of 1-cent-a-piece candy and threw out over the audience. Personally, I had a broken camera and pretended to be a journalist to the band's chagrin. When they pretended to kick me off the stage my mom sreamed angrily from the stairs to "let Markus be!" which of course disturbed the concert experience.

Hotter Than Hell was the band's second album and was released only a half a year after the debut album. This was before KISS became the commercial product machine they later turned into, in my eyes they were still primarily a rock n'roll band in 1974. And overall it's a pretty good album. My old favorite songs Parasite, Goin' Blind, Comin' Home and Strange Ways are mixed with some not as good.

The album was recorded in Los Angeles with the same producers as on the first album. The band, where all the members were from New York, didn't like Los Angeles. And they seem not entirely happy with the finished result as they have in interviews been reluctant if they used the right producers. The idea was to capture and reproduce the band's heaviness and energy from live shows, but the question is whether they succeeded. And to add difficulties, the label Casablanca no longer had a contract with Warner Bros. regarding distribution, which thereby became problematic. As a consequence the album didn't sell as well as the people involved had hoped. 1977 it was awarded with a gold record, though, after 500,000 copies sold.

Of my four favorite songs no less than three are written by Ace (with the help of Paul on Comin' Home). However, he hadn't the self-confidence at the time to sing himself, and instead let the other band members do this. But he was a good songwriter, and of the members later simultaneously released solo albums, his is reagarded as the best by most people.

Over the years, Paul and especially Gene, have been regarded as "the bad guys", mainly concerning their treatment of Peter and Ace and their clear focus on the commercialization of the band with millions of products. Peter and Ace have often been seen as the heroes. At the same time, Peter and Ace had during many years relatively severe drug problems which affected their behavior and priorities, and they were certainly quite difficult to handle. In an interview Gene mentions, for example, how they had to be quick to record Aces parts early in the day before he passed out. So there are probably several angles concerning this part of the KISStory...

Hotter Than Hell is a pretty good album, and was created by a band that was still primarily a band. If you like to Glam / Rockn'roll / Metal from the 70's chances are you'll like this record. It's not as heavy as Led Zeppelin or Black Sabbath from the same time, many of KISS' fans were children, so it's both lighter and more accessible, and sure enough, a little more superficial.


Tracklist

Side A
1. Got To Choose 3:54
2. Parasite 3:01
3. Goin' Blind 3:36
4. Hotter Than Hell 3:31
5. Let Me Go, Rock And Roll 2:14

Side B
1. All The Way 3:18
2. Watchin' You 3:43
3. Mainline 3:50
4. Comin' Home 2:37
5. Strange Ways 3:18