I'm required by law to purchase material put out by current or past members of KISS. I'm under no obligation to like it.
I listened to this album with the hopes that I would. Ace is, after all, a rock icon. One of the greatest guitarists of his generation.
I wish I could say I liked it. But I didn't. I understand that he has to hew close to what he knows. He can't be Disturbed. He can't be Korn. He can't even be AC/DC. He has to be what he is, and unfortunately what he is in this case is out of touch. Nothing new, nothing fresh, nothing raw or energetic enough to set it apart. This album could have come out in 1979 and it still wouldn't have resonated.
Ace's guitar work is quality. For a 58-year old guy, he can still shred with the best of them. But in an effort to be more mainstream -- I guess -- he tones his best quality down far too often.
There are three "instrumental" tracks on the album. They are the best cuts, but are merely serviceable. Nothing I'd clamor to hear again.
Where Ace self-destructs is in his embarrassingly amateur effort at writing lyrics. I can just see him sitting there with a pencil, going "ok, what rhymes with tree... uh, bee, flea, lee...."
Take this from the track "Little Below the Angels":
Alcohol was a friend of mine, it almost got me dead.
I crashed some cars got into fights, some things I now regret.
I've been told I've got nine lives, or maybe even ten.
Now I've changed my ways, my soul's restored I'm better now than then. That's probably the best part of a song that includes a spoken word portion where his daughter asks what an angel looks like and he replies "The most beautiful thing I've ever seen"
I'm sure he meant it to come off as heartwarming and sentimental, but in his "ack, ack" voice and deadpan delivery it just doesn't work at all. It is absolutely CRINGE-worthy. And then kids sing. Badly. I think they must have been his kids.
Why his kids? Because the fact is poor Ace just can't sing. He does an okay job with Fox on the Run, a cover track. But the rest is so bad you usually can't tell if he's just talking or trying to sing. It's god awful.
The guitar work was definitely of decent quality. What Ace really needs is to hook up with another band, another singer and another lyricist. He can't do all three himself because the results are shock-me bad. He spent 20 years working on this album, longer than the 17 Axl Rose put in on Chinese Democracy. Both are essentially worthless. That's 37 years of wasted effort by two former metal icons.
Maybe Axl and Ace should get together. That's the kind of volatile mix that might work.
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