Tag: Monster

D’Luna – ‘Monster’ (2024) – Album Review (The Jeff Scott Soto Series)

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If you’ve followed along when I did the Jeff Scott Soto Series, you will notice a trend where Jeff can’t say no. If a friend of his asks him to sing on their album, he usually says yes, even when he shouldn’t. Is this project one he should’ve said NO!? Let’s find out.

Guitarist, Dave Deluna, is the namesake behind the D’Luna name. This is his album, his concept, his everything…well, Jeff Scott Soto does contribute to the song writing as well, but this is Dave’s baby. I am not familiar with Dave at all before this album and the only reason I know about it is because of Soto as if you can’t tell from the number of reviews I’ve done on Jeff from the list at the bottom, I’m a big fan.

The rest of the band consists of Philip Bynoe (bass), Dan Meyers (keyboards), Oren Halmut (drums) and occasional guests on certain songs. And if you need to describe the style of music on this album, it would be heavy! Heavy guitars, heavy drums, heavy bass and straight up heavy rock. Throw Jeff in the mix and all should be right with the world…right???

The album definitely starts out strong with the title track “Monster”. Nasty riffs, with an almost Vai-esque style to it (for a brief moment at least). Jeff’s vocals are strong, intense and serious. But there is a cool surprise with this one as it also features King’s X, Dug Pinnick, on vocals with Jeff. The two make a powerful force. The guitar work on this one is solid, no denying that my only complaint is the solo doesn’t match the song really.

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The Collection: Episode 6 – Kiss on Vinyl (Part 3)

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The video is up now for Episode 6 of The Collection. When you have older siblings, their music taste can influence what you like and my brother, Gary, was a huge Kiss fan and that spawned me being one as well. From about 7-8 years old all the way til now at 55, I am still a Kiss fan.

For Part 3, we pick up with Kiss after the reunion and start with Psycho Circus and go all the way up to today and their latest Anniversary releases. We even through in a few Kiss Adjacent Vinyl. I was surprised by how many were still sealed. And I was surprised by how upset I got on some of their packaging choices. I give my honest opinion and don’t hold back.

I hope you enjoy this episode which goes “live” right now…Monday night, March 25th at 8pm. Please do leave a comment and I promise I’ll address them as soon as I can! Don’t forget to click “Like” and “Subscribe”. Thanks for watching.

Kiss – The Best & Worst Song From Every Album

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I have done a few of these already on the Best & Worst songs from every Judas Priest, Cheap Trick and Whitesnake albums. I really enjoyed doing those so I thought I would continue that process and this time we would go through every Kiss studio album (including the 4 solo albums) and see what is the best song and the worst one off each album as well. Kiss has 24 studio albums to go through so sit back, grab a drink and take it all in. Now, let’s preface this with the fact that these are my choices and not necessarily yours as we can have different opinions. My worst song could be your favorite and this is okay. We all like different things or this would be a very dull world. I hope you enjoy the list!! And we will go chronological if you were wondering.

‘KISS’ (1974)

THE BEST SONG – “BLACK DIAMOND”: On an album with so many ‘classic’ Kiss tunes, it was hard to pick. The album ends with one of the band’s best songs, “Black Diamond”.  The song was written by Paul and he does sing on it, but is mostly sung by Peter.  The songs starts off with a 12-string acoustic guitar and Paul sings the opening line and when he screams “Hit It!”, the song turns in to a blistering rock song with Peter taking over vocals. The song was written about New York and those ladies working on the street that they would fantasize about.  Peter’s gravelly vocals gave the song such a powerful edge and he put so much heart and soul in to those vocals.  Towards the end of the song, there is a brief musical interlude with Ace tearing it up on guitar and Peter laying down some fills all accompanied by that nasty bass riff from Gene before Peter lays down a final barrage of drum fills and then the song slowly, distortedly comes winding down to an end.  It is dark and foreboding and so metal.

THE WORST SONG – “KISSIN’ TIME”: The worst is a cover of the Bobby Rydell Song “Kissin’ Time” which was written by Kal Mann and Bernie Lowe.  It was recorded two months after the release and added a couple months after that to the album.  The band was not happy about this at all, but they were pressured into recording it.  Paul, Gene and Peter all sang on the song and it is just a shit song.  It has that whole 50’s, early 60’s style and is not a wrong song.  It is easy to hear that they didn’t want to be there singing this crap and that is why I want the original version so I don’t have to hear that song anymore.

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Kiss – The Albums Ranked Worst to First

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We are finally to the end of the Kiss Review Series. And like I like to do at the end of each series is Rank the Studio Albums from Worst to First and we aren’t going to do it any differently here. There are 24 Studio albums and since there are so many, I am keeping the summaries brief and no videos as I usually like to post a video with each album, but just way too many to do this time around.

Kiss began in 1973 and are still around today, but the last studio album was in 2012. It started with the original four – Paul Stanley, Gene Simmons, Peter Criss and Ace Frehley. Then came Eric Carr who replaced Peter Criss; then Vinnie Vincent who replaced Ace Frehley; then Mark St. John to replace Vinnie and then Bruce Kulick replaced Mark; and it continues with Eric Singer replacing Eric Carr after his death and then Peter & Ace came back in and out after the reunion and then finally Tommy Thayer replaced Ace for good. Lots of changes, but Gene and Paul are always the consistent formula that has kept Kiss “Alive” all these years. For the diehard fan, remember, this is my opinion and your favorites are probably going to be different, but it is okay as we both love Kiss. For the newbie, this is a good guideline on where to focus.

Now, if the band ever decides to do another Studio album, I will gladly come back and update this, but it doesn’t look like that will ever happen. If you want to check out the review of each album in detail, there are links at the bottom to all the reviews in the series and there were only 72 of them!! It took me almost 14 months to get through them all and it is still the most fun I have had on the site.

Thanks for spending all this time with me going through the Kiss catalog and my Kiss collection. I hope you enjoyed it. Enough chit chat as there is a lot to get through so sit back, grab a coffee or a beer and enjoy!!

WORST – ‘PETER CRISS’ (1978):

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Kiss – ‘Monster’ (2012) – Album Review (The Kiss Review Series)

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It has only been three short years since ‘Sonic Boom’ and Kiss is ready to put out another album. Three years might seem like a long time, but lately in the Kiss World, it is a blip in the radar. The band has actually not had any drama during this time gap and things seem to be going smoothly which is not normal for these guys. The band is unchanged with Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley still at the helm and Tommy Thayer and Eric Singer still the hired guns.

The band went back in the studio starting in April 2011 and didn’t finish the album until January 2012. And heck, then it wasn’t even released until October 9, 2012. The guys were in no rush obviously. Kiss wanted to get back to their roots on this one while keeping it sounding like what the band is today. To help accomplish that the band actually recorded the album using analog equipment and a 24 Track Tape and a Trident board. They were going at it old school…no digital. Did it help? Well the album went all the way to #3 on the Billboard Charts, so we will see.

But speaking of old school. There were no outside writers and no outside players (except one on piano, but we will get to that shortly). Tommy gets to sing again and so does Eric. This was a band album, just like ‘Sonic Boom’, and a band album is what the fans want. They started with around 20 songs and ended up with 12 on the vinyl & the CD (13 on iTunes). We are talking the 12 here since my copy is on vinyl. Let’s get started.

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