Kiss recently unleashed their latest musical offering Monster. Released on October 9, 2012, almost three years to the day since their previous album, Sonic Boom, Monster offers fans twelve brand new songs. Both of these albums share many things in common. Both contain songs that were written solely by members of the band without any input from outside sources, both were produced by frontman Paul Stanley, and neither album contains a single ballad. So how does Monster measure up to the rest of the band's impressive catalog? Let me begin by saying that I have listened to the entire disc from beginning to end about four times, and here are my thoughts.
I have to admit that so far, this album is not grabbing ahold of me the way most of the other KISS albums have in the past. It certainly does not live up to its beastly title. I only really like about half the songs. At this point, my honest assessment is that Monster is a fairly decent album, but not great. There is enough good stuff to make it worth purchase, but as a whole, it isn't one of Kiss' stronger efforts in my opinion. Some of the better cuts include: Wall Of Sound, Freak, Long Way Down, and All For The Love Of Rock & Roll. There are a couple of others that I felt were okay, but nothing to get too excited about. I think the main problem is that the songs just aren't very memorable this time around. You enjoy them while you are listening, but once you have turned the album off, there just aren't any that stick in your mind. As much as it pains me to say this much of the rest is just derivative and boring...and if you knew how dedicated I am to this band, those words would carry a lot of weight.
I think the album's production may have done much to contribute to that problem. The album is very noisy and loose from a production standpoint, so everything just sounds too muddy and nothing stands out. I've read many reviews that say this was done purposely, because they wanted it to sound raw and unproduced. If that is indeed the case, then it was a fatal mistake. They have done the songs a disservice in this regard. I think many of these songs had the potential to be better than they are, but the poor quality of the overall sound killed them!
In fact, the problem with the production also makes it difficult to judge each of the musicians individual performances. For me, the only one who clearly gives a strong performance throughout the entire album is Eric Singer. His drumming is always awesome! But all of the guitar parts just seem to run together into a bunch of mush most of the time. Also, there is a weird tone on most of Gene's bass parts that only adds to the problem. Vocal wise, Eric again turns in a great vocal on his track All For The Love Of Rock & Roll. Gene's vocals are also fairly strong for the most part. Unfortunately, Paul sounds like he is really struggling vocally on this one; his voice sounds very strained and seems to have deteriorated significantly in recent years. And poor Tommy...the only thing I can say is that while he is a good guitar player, this man should never be placed behind a microphone...YIKES!
So my final conclusions here are that this music is just very average. As I said earlier, there are several decent songs, at least enough to make the album worth purchasing...especially for die hard fans. But unfortunately, there's nothing here that will really knock you out. Our heroes may have made a valiant effort, but the results are mixed at best. For me, this one deserves about three out of five stars!
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