Ace Frehley - Anomaly

My cousin quipped that the reason I didn’t get Anomaly as a promo was because it sucked and the record company was afraid that people would find out about it sooner. Judging by the song titles and ridiculous cover art, the signs were pointing to the possibility that he was indeed correct.
There is a song on the album called “Space Bear.”
How good can the album be with a song called “Space Bear.”
There’s also a song called “I Come From Outer Space” which features a chorus of “I thought I told you I came from outer space” repeated over a fairly innocuous guitar riff.
Sure enough, a few hours after I heard the song, I began telling people-or merely talking to myself-“I thought I told you I came from outer space.” I’d do it with different inflections, just to make it sound different.
Ace has his way with a hook.
The issue isn’t if Anomaly bad-it really isn’t-the issue is that it took Ace twenty years to record a new solo album, and this is the best he could come up with?
Christ, Ace has run ragged in Kiss, releasing a couple of albums a year, and was then forced to whip out a solo album in no time. And what came of it? The best of the four Kiss solo albums and the most popular.
We’ve given Ace twenty years to return and what does he bring to the table? Another song about the perils of drinking. Wasn’t there another song twenty years ago about the perils of drinking? Did Ace fall off the wagon, or is his recovery from alcoholism the most lengthy in recorded history?
“Foxy And Free” is a decent opener, with its neat Hendrix references and metal Ace dishing out some aggro riffs, it’s heavier than what one would expect from a 57-year-old man. Or is it 60? Who the hell knows? The point is, Ace is old now and is still releasing hard rock damage of someone half his age.
There are some fine moments, there are more silly ones, and there is a couple where you think, “If these two Ace songs were tacked on to the new Kiss album and the replacement band’s songs removed, you’d have a really good Kiss album.
Instead, you have one barely good Kiss album a slightly average-yet surprisingly consistent and heavy-Ace Frehley solo album.
But you’d still hold it against him for taking so long to come up with something this uneventful.
After all, the fucker came from outer space.