Review Summary: If you’re a frontman, and would like to learn how to hold a crowd under your thumb, then this is as perfect a manual as you will find. But if you’re in it for the music, you better go back to digging Alive II.
As some of you may know by now, the beginning of the 90’s marked something of a new beginning for KISS. After a dreadful decade, which had nullified everything the past ten years had accomplished, the group regained their form with 1992’s
Revenge, an album which saw Simmons and company try out a new sound to good effect. So, of course, with their popularity quickly rising again, the time was deemed suitable for another one of those famed “live” albums, imaginatively titled
Alive III.
With a cover which threw back to its immediate predecessor,
Alive II,
III is notorious for holding quite a few records. To begin with, it was the only
Alive to capture the group without their trademark makeup; it was the only one to feature the formation with Simmons, Stanley, Kulick and Singer; and it was the first to contain songs from every phase of the group’s career up to that point. But is it their best? In a nutshell: no.
You see, the problem here is the same that plagued the first
Alive: the album only rarely feels like a “live” album. Oh, sure, changes are made here and there, more notably to the vocal lines, and interplay with the audience is frequent. But then, why is it that we barely listen to the crowd behind most of the songs? The best live albums feature the roaring audience filling every nook and cranny, yet here they only express themselves when Stanley riles them up or when a new song is about to start. Add to that the fact that most of the tracks are pulled off with virtual perfection, and suspicion certainly starts to arise, a suspicion which is only made stronger when we hear friggin’
reverb/echo effects on
I Was Made For Lovin’ You, and again on a latter song. These effects would certainly have been hard to reproduce live, yet there they are on the record…
All speculation aside, though, this is just not a very good live album. The performance sounds limp throughout, lacking heaviness, as though the group were playing pop versions of their own songs. Everything sounds a little too perfect and squeaky-clean for what was reportedly a very raw performance; Bruce Kulick’s guitar tone is gentle both in the songs from his stint and on the older ones, and when it isn’t, the song itself sucks; Simmons and Singer are competent, but the unnecessary changes made to the vocal lines are distracting and annoying as hell. Plus, the tracklist sucks.
Seriously, I understand the need to encompass every phase of your career in a live show, but some of the choices here are puzzling. And I’m not even talking about the 80’s songs, which are limited to the decent
Heaven’s On Fire,
Forever and
Lick It Up, plus two of the best tracks from
Creatures Of The Night. No, I’m talking about the
older songs. Sure,
Rock And Roll All Night, Detroit Rock City and
Deuce are here, as they should be. But then we get
Watchin’ You and
I Still Love You, two snore-inducing tracks from the group’s early day. The reason behind the choice of these two particular songs is puzzling. I understand not including
Cold Gin, Beth or
Hard Luck Woman, but heck, why not make some space for
Love Gun, God Of Thunder, I Stole Your Love, Strutter, or even
Shout It Out Loud!? Puzzling, to say the least.
But before you start thinking it’s all bad, let me reassure you: there
are some good moments.
I Just Wanna is probably the best, and the only one where the “live” ambiance is really felt throughout the song (parts of other songs, like
Deuce, feature it, too, but never in the whole song, like here);
Detroit Rock City and
I Love It Loud are their usual larger-than-life selves, and not even the pussification and vocal changes can bring them down, although they come pretty close on the former; and
Domino is always fun, of course. Plus, the ending rendition of
Star Spangled Banner is moving, although haunted by the ghost of a much older, much better rendition by one Jimi Hendrix. The remaining songs suffer, to a greater or lesser extent, from the problems exposited earlier in this review, which ultimately detract from the listening experience.
But this album holds another, very important trump: Paul Stanley. The man gives a lesson in crowd control, whether he is asking them to sing the “magic word” on
I Just Wanna (the magic word being, of course, “f-“) or asking the guys if they like to “look at naked women” (at this point, after the men in the audience manifest themselves, he asks if the ladies like to take someone home and get naked; hilariously, the volume of girly shrieks in response to this question is about three times louder than that of the males previously). Still, even his showman antics aren’t enough to redeem some of the serious problems of this album.
In the end, then,
Alive III is just another disappointing KISS live album. It’s better than the first
Alive!, but doesn’t hold a candle to the second, still the best and most recommended installment in the series. If you’re a frontman, and would like to learn how to hold a crowd under your thumb, then this is as perfect a manual as you will find. But if you’re in it for the music, you better go back to digging
Alive II.
Recommended Tracks
I Just Wanna
I Love It Loud
