Released: 1976
Tracks: Detroit Rock City; King of the Night Time World; God of Thunder; Great Expectations; Flaming Youth; Sweet Pain; Shout it Out Loud; Beth; Do You Love Me
Best track: Detroit Rock City
Tracks to skip: God of Thunder & Great Expectations
Destroyer is Kiss’ most famous studio album and rightly considered the best one that doesn’t have “Alive” in the title. Clearly it’s the most consistent studio album they ever made. After the success of Alive and especially Rock and Roll All Nite, they felt they had something to prove and they honestly set out at making the best album they could. The band got aboard producer Bob Ezrin (who had worked with Alice Cooper a lot) to help them in their task. Looking at the liner notes just now, I noticed how Ezrin had a hand in writing nearly all of these songs, the exceptions being God of Thunder and Sweet Pain. For this album (and only for this album, as far as the Early Kiss goes) the band significantly focused on production and not just writing songs about females. Yeah there are the usual female ones, but at least they’re from a different point of view.
The album starts out with this strange introduction of a kid (we assume) leaving his house and driving around listening to Alive on his car 8-track. And of course, since Detroit Rock City is so intense, he ends up crashing his car at the end of the song. Actually, I think Detroit Rock City is a really cool song and probably the best song Kiss ever wrote. It has a great chorus, really cool middle bit with harmony guitars, and a nice bass line from Gene Simmons. I’ve always liked his basslines to tell you the truth. Yeah, DRC is a kick ass song. Thinking in terms of ‘album’ here, the song segues nicely into King of the Night Time World, which is definitely the 2nd best song on here. It’s a great 1-2 punch to start off the album. And then…children screaming? Ugh, see, I like God of Thunder as a composition (see Alive II to hear how it should be done), but this studio version is SO stupid and just it just plods along at the slowest pace ever. The kids at the beginning of the song (and all the way through it, actually) are confusing and really stupid. Why??? I still don’t get what they have to do with Kiss or the song or anything. It’s not a bad song since they clearly want to be comic book characters (check them out on the album cover; first drawing of the band instead of actual photos…and Gene looks pretty damn cool) and that’s what the song really is. It just comes across as pretty stupid on the studio version.
I think the band did go over the top sometimes concerning the production. The large chorus on Great Expectations makes a bad song 10 times worse. There are also the infamous strings and brass on Beth. OK, I honestly kinda like this song. Yeah it’s cheesy, but as a song it’s not bad. However, instead of the super orchestra and piano coverage they have on it, what they SHOULD have done is done it acoustic…like they finally did on the Unplugged album. Maybe it was cooler in 1976 to have huge orchestras than it was to do a simple acoustic rendition; I don’t know. I know I would still prefer some acoustic guitars to syrupy strings and cheesy brass. As for the other songs on here, Flaming Youth is a good song, but the chorus is silly. Sweet Pain doesn’t affect me either way. Do You Love Me has some nice riffs but the lyrics are stupid. Shout it Out Loud is for me a better “anthem” than Rock and Roll All Nite. I think it’s a better song and it rocks more. However, RNR All Nite is better to sing along with and having “I wanna rock and roll all night and party every day” is a better chorus than “shout it, shout it, shout it out loud”. Whatever. I still like the song. It all boils down to this; Destroyer is the best non-compilation studio album. If you want the best Kiss album, go with Alive. You have to admire them for their attempt to make a serious and well-produced album. I wish they would have continued with the idea and possibly gone further with it. Unfortunately, for the next ones they went back to just doing records that were collections of songs.
Rating: 83
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