Love HTH, their early stuff has a contempory Stones-esque ease I'm instantly at home with... I ignored 'em for a long time, thinking they were more of a T-Rex/Sweet 70s glam outfit, but this is just good rootsy rock music. "Goin' Blind" is a beaut.vol.2 wrote:His one of the solo albums is the only really good one. It's clear he had something to say outside of Kiss as a performance troop.BIL wrote: Anyhoo, been trying out Ace Frehley's solo stuff.
80's KISS is okay, but I can't really bother when there are better things to listen to. I will *always* be a die-hard fan of Hotter Than Hell. I think it's one of the best "HARD ROCK" albums of the 70's and is criminally underrated in general.
Definitely gotta be choosy with 80s KISS, tons of Leppardesque guff in there. All big singalong choruses, no guts. To a lesser extent, I feel the same about 80s Ramones, and late-80s Motorhead and Priest. You can find the odd killer track - ANIMAL BOY stomps heads - but the signal/noise ratio of their 70s prime (and in Motorhead/Priest's case, their post-80s renaissances) is practically reversed.
Gave the full record a blast this evening - only track I think doesn't match the original, at minimum, is Blinded Pain. Feels like he took the opposite approach from the other songs, and held too much back - I can't imagine Morikawa's fuller Last Anthem rendition is at all out of his range.FinalBaton wrote:So I listened to Heavy Anthem. Looks like Graham singing, eh? I had misunderstood his stint, I thought he had re-recorded several full albums with them, sort of a parralel Anthem band timeline. So I was quite confused when I heard this album.
That guy can really sing up a storm, eh? holy fuck... no head voice, no falsetto even, just full voice all the way up his register in it's glass shatering, mountain flatenning power. damn impressive...
It was a good listen. production wasn't terribly dissimilar to the OG recordings, and I thought Graham provided good english versions of those songs. As far as ''best of'' type deals go, this is one of the more interesting ones out there, ti be sure, due to this twist. and inspired rendition.
Otherwise though, it's like a SUPERHARD Greatest Hits set. Especially fond of its absolutely barraging EVIL TOUCH, and Midnight Sun, a track that distinctly gains from the extra muscle, with its midtempo death-march and ominous imagery. They nail LOVE IN VAIN too - Bonnet tends to colour his vocals more broadly than Eizo and Morikawa, which sometimes sacrifices detail - Hunting Time comes to mind - but it works a treat here. Sounds like he's belting a lost track off Rainbow's Down to Earth.
Could call it LOUD WHITE DUDE LABEL, but the whole band sounds like they've been hitting the weights.
Gave Gypsy Ways its long-overdue listen, LEGAL KILLING is indeed fuckin rad. I love how it just slams the listener headlong into that hammering, barely-controlled riff... FIYAH