Re: The Official KISS Thread!
Continuing on with my short reviews of the 80's Kiss albums....
*
Animalize (1984)
Not as good as the previous couple of albums, but still a pretty solid effort. Bad thing was suddenly Kiss went from leather wearing badasses (as on the Lick It Up cover) to dressing like goofy hairband guys. Gene had been in a couple of movies and had short hair, so he was wearing a wig for the entire tour and it looked bad. Plus they all were wearing pieces of "animal skins" as part of the wardrobe and it was pretty wonky, however I guess it could be expected due to the album name and cover art. The wardrobe didn't take anything away from the music on the tour. They still whooped ass in concert, as always.
Lineup changes: Vinnie Vincent was replaced by Mark St. John. Unfortunately for Mark, his tenure was very shortlived due to supposedly having some personality conflicts with the other members of the band, as well as developing Reiter's Syndrome (arthritis), which impeded on his abilty to perform live. Mark was replaced by Bruce Kullick after just 2 and a half shows on the tour. However, that doesn't take away from his work on the album, which is pretty good. He wasn't as flashy his predecessor, Vinnie, but his guitar work was still solid. Mark only appeared in one video, which was the first single off the album, Heaven's On Fire.
On to the album.
Heaven's on Fire was the huge commercial success on this album.
Thrills In The Night also hit the MTV airwaves. Both good songs. To this day, Thrills is still one of my favorite Kiss songs. Other good tunes on this album would be:
I've Had Enough (Into The Fire),
Lonely Is The Hunter,
Under The Gun, and
While The City Sleeps. The album sold a ton, but more for the commercial success of Heaven's On Fire than anythings (I think).
If you like Kiss, this is still a very good album, but don't expect Creatures of the Night or Lick It Up. Good, but not
that good.
My Rating:
8 out of 10 stars.
By the way, they did release a video of the Animalize Tour. Very good and any die-hard Kiss fan should own this. I had it on VHS and wore it out. There are DVDs of this concert available on the internet, but I don't know if anything is an actual release, or if they are all illegal distribution copies.