Kiss - Dynasty

It’s my intention to review every single Kiss album ever because I am retarded.
I’ve already resigned myself to the fact that I’ll pan pretty much all of them, so why bother. I bother because I need to better understand why a band that I’ve despised for so long can carry so much influence among rock ‘n roll fans. It seems that around every corner there’s an example of Kiss’ contemptuous attitude towards their fans and their genre. So there must be something, somewhere, that shows me how all of this can go overlooked.
There must be one Kiss album that transcends all of this.
One of the examples of Kiss’ contempt is “I Was Made For Loving You,” a song that blatantly traded their fan base, their bread and butter, for the possibility of greater mass appeal.
The album that featured Kiss’ foray into disco was Dynasty.
I can’t be sure, but I have a strong suspicion that Kiss probably felt that the Rolling Stones’ “Miss You” gave them permission to try a little bit of 4/4 action. The trouble is, “Miss You” sounds like a little slice of N.Y.C. underbelly, with the elements of the Stones audibly present. There’s no mistake that Charlie Watts is propelling the whole thing with the rest of the band clearly performing.
“I Was Made For Loving You” sounds like it’s the work of session musicians with Paul Stanley laying down the vocal track after a night out looking for anonymous gay sex at Studio 54.
It sounds so out of place with the rest of their catalog, and as I learned, the rest of Dynasty, that it’s amazing that they weren’t run out of town before they started work on Unmasked.
Nonetheless, I was prepared for “I Was Made For Loving You” because I had heard it before. I wasn’t prepared for the song that not only should have been a hit, but could have been one entirely on the band’s own merits. “Sure Know Something,” a surprisingly good offering from Paul, pointed to the idea that maybe the rest of Dynasty wouldn’t be so bad.
Additionally, Ace’s “2000 Man” was decent too, even though I vividly remember him butchering it when I saw them live.
But then I started rolling my eyes on Peter Criss’ “Dirty Living” until finally, the fifth song in (side two’s lead off cut), I wanted to punch somebody. And the composer? I sure know something: I fucking can’t stand Gene Simmons. I immediately knew he was singing “Charisma,” anyone can tell from his tone-deaf warbling that it’s him. What I wasn’t prepared for is how fucking stupid the song is. Seriously, this dude can’t play, can’t sing, can’t write, what the fuck is he doing in the band? Didn’t anybody consider that, anyone could have decked themselves out in some rinky-dink monster make-up and played his role, literally, a million times better? The only talent Gene seems to posses is firebreathing.
Paul’s “Magic Touch” is typical, unforgettable Paul Stanley filler. From what I gather, Paul Stanley bats about .200 (which is still better than Gene), which means that each Kiss album contains probably one or two decent tracks penned by the star child.
Someone forgot to tell the rest of the band that Ace Frehley is probably their best asset, so why not give him a few more opportunities? “Hard Times” is a good tune, and the only problem with it (and this is a characteristic throughout Dynasty) is that the production quality is a bit tame. This could have easily been a nice dirty-sounding ditty, but “Mad” Vincent Poncia tries to make things nice a syrupy for the masses.
Gene comes back for another shit-stain called “X Ray Eyes” and Ace delivers a turd called “Save Your Love,” a song in which the tone-deaf backing chorus offers “Save your love. Save it! Save it!” with the same enthusiasm as labelmates Village People.