More KISS was requested in a remastered, Japanese releases on SHM-CD, so here’s “Lick It Up“, the first unmasked album from the band, and one of my favorites from the legendary act.
You gotta listen to the sound quality of this remastered release, fuller, pretty much in the late Nineties style, but works great for the production job on “Lick It Up”. This Limited, mini-LP replica numbered SHM-CD is a collector’s piece right now, very hard to find even used.
After original drummer Peter Criss left, the band’s attempt in the early 80s to return to its roots somehow got derailed and turned into the 1981 concept album Music From the Elder: despite of being a very good album, fans didn’t understand it.
Lead guitarist Ace Frehley checked out somewhere in the middle of making the record, and it seemed like remaining founding members Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons had hit bottom.
Amazingly, they recovered – at least creatively – with 1982’s Creatures of the Night, a defiant, backs-to-the-wall masterpiece that added new levels of grit, drama and shading to their repertoire.
It should have returned Kiss to the top of the mountain. Instead, it went largely ignored by an audience that had either moved on or grown tired of the band’s recent stylistic wanderings.
It was now clear that a big change was needed. So on Sept. 18, 1983, Stanley, Simmons, drummer Eric Carr and new guitarist Vinnie Vincent appeared on MTV to reveal their real faces.
The album that the stunt was designed to promote, ‘Lick It Up’, was released the same day. And for the first time in five years, things worked out exactly as Kiss had planned.
“I’ve always believed that Lick It Up was proof that people listen with their eyes,” Stanley said in the book Kiss: Behind the Mask. “The response to Lick It Up was four times the response to Creatures, and I think that’s purely because people were tired of the image of the band and couldn’t hear past what they saw. It’s a really good album, but it’s not in the same league as Creatures of the Night.
While ‘Lick It Up’ does trade the glorious dynamics and slightly outside-the-lines coloring of its predecessor for a much sleeker, polished and slightly pop-metal sound, Paul Stanley is a bit too harsh.
The songwriting chemistry among Simmons, Vincent and himself didn’t last long due to personal and contractual differences, but it did result in one of the band’s most cohesive and appealing albums.
The insanely catchy title track broke the dam at radio and MTV, despite a somewhat strange post-apocalyptic video that spends its first 30 seconds showing the band’s crotches walking down the street and the rest of the time demonstrating that Gene Simmons has no idea what to do with himself in front of a camera without his fire breathing, fake blood and demon makeup.
Other highlights include Stanley and Carr’s half-rapped, half-sung “All Hell’s Breaking Loose,” and three stomping numbers in which Simmons reclaims his crown as rock’s most unrepentant naughty and unsubtle lyricist: “Not for the Innocent,” “Fits Like a Glove” and the charmingly titled “Dance All Over Your Face.”
Kiss’ new image and second strong album in a row were enough to return them to some degree of their former glory, as ‘Lick It Up’ cracked the Top 30 on the Billboard 200 while more and more fans once again turned up at their concerts.
The following year brought another new album and the massive “Heaven’s on Fire” single, confirming that Kiss had successfully escaped its turn-of-the-decade troubles and entered a second era of success.
Killer 80s album
Tracklist:
01. Exciter
02. Not For The Innocent
03. Lick It Up
04. Young and Wasted
05. Gimme More
06. All Hell's Breakin Loose
07. A Million To One
08. Fits Like A Glove
09. Dance All Over Your Face
10. And On The 8Th Day
KISS – Lick It Up [Japan Edition SHM-CD] (1983) [2008], MP3+FLAC
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