Maroon Weekly

By Brice Nichols

What KISS lacks in talent, they make up for through pure marketing genius and shameless self deprecating gimmicks. As a recent refinement to their magic art of selling out, the band has reached a pinnacle of what business minded folk might call capitalizing and what those among us with dignity would calling selling your soul – making a deal with Wal-Mart.

The band arranged for their newest album Sonic Boom, the first production in eleven years, to be sold exclusively through the retailing giant that consistently sell you things you don’t need for cheaper than you could ever imagine. Now, thanks to Wal-Mart you can not only party every night, but for a limited time rock and/or roll every day for an always low price of twelve dollars.

Wal-Mart is actually the second place I would search for a KISS album, first being a garbage can. Yeah, that’s right – a receptacle for trash. Regardless, I just had to give this album a whirl when I heard about it, but being a slave to neither Sam Walton nor trash bins, I looked in a place that is only slightly less repulsive – the internet. It was there on this “internet” device I found a super official link from the super official KISS site that sent me to a free streaming on YouTube via a channel run by “nitroass23B.” This was amazing and I must say: props to this guy, because he certainly kept my nitro ass out of Wal-Mart, and for that I can’t thank him enough.

As I’m listening to the album I seem to find a problem almost immediately: the music isn’t really all that terrible. I truly expected worse from these clowns. Despite the traditional reliance on repetition and a grade school approach to lyricism, the idiocy of KISS still finds a way to tap a reluctant toe. I can hate the band, the name of the album, the theme of the songs, the shifty deal between them and the primary icon of mindless consumption, but at the end of the day, when I’m not entirely disgusted by KISS’s music, I really can’t spend that much time picking it apart.

As long as you can stomach chorus lines like, “Danger You, Danger Me…Danger Us!” the music is totally listenable, and actually not a bad deal if you want some cheap thrills. The album was recorded on analog equipment, bringing back a little edge of their old sound, which is surprisingly effective.

There are some noticeably catchy arena rock riffs that sound both standard and somehow fresh at the same time, but just when I’m about to get into the jams, I remember I’m listening to KISS and the head banging subsides. That being said, if you didn’t already have a vendetta against this band, it would be hard to deny this cheesy album out of nothing more than novelty.

I feel like I almost let KISS off the hook with the way this review closed so I’d just like to address a couple key points that continue to bother me about this album and KISS as a music enterprise in general.

1.) Sonic Boom. I get it, because sonic is a cool science word for sound, and boom is a loud noise. The only time this album title would have been topical would have been when the Concorde supersonic jet was still in commission or if you were an eight year old coming up with band names.

2.) Gene Simmons is responsible for the creation of two, count them, two reality shows and released a “solo album” of his “music” entitled “***hole.” Ten points for honesty, but negative ten for discretion. One of those reality shows was entitled “Gene Simmons Family Jewels.” Again with the discretion…

I’m just going to have leave it there before I overshadow the entire point of this review, the point being that Sonic Boom can be enjoyed not only by the musically handicapped, but by folks of what I deem higher music taste as well. As long as you’re effectively able remove your thinking cap for half an hour, this album might be a good way to hear some mindless arena rock or at the very least take part in a really funny twelve dollar joke.

Thanks to the shadowy figures behind all that makeup in KISS and the shadowy figures behind those corporate desks at Wal-Mart, Americans have universal access to “rawk,” however mediocre it may be, and for that I must say not only God Bless KISS and Wal-Mart, but God Bless America as well!

Also, God, if you have the time to bless “nitroass23B” that would be rad too. Thanks bud!