Shane’s Rock Challenge: KISS – 1976 – Rock And Roll Over

Shane’s Music Challenge: KISS – 1976 – Rock And Roll Over
7.5/10

KISS’s fifth studio album wasn’t the first to fully realise the marketing potential of their make-up slathered personas, but it is arguably their best. A striking cartoonish painting by Michael Doret that played up to the band’s image and appealed to both Eastern and Western aesthetics, is has often been reworked or parodied by others, notably Aussie punk upstarts Hard-Ons.

Musically, Rock And Roll Over is vibrant and alive – the sound of a band still: the disintegration of that ideal was still a couple of years and a couple of hundred stadium gigs away at this stage.

The album perhaps lacks the coherency of its predecessor Destroyer, which was almost conceptual, and lyrically harkens back to their earlier days with more lusty songs extollingthe virtues of various groupies, girlfriends, hangers-on and classy chicks willing to meet Gene in the ladies room or a quickie.

That said, I Want You, Calling Doctor Love, Ladies Room, Love Her Leave Her, Makin’ Love and especially Hard Luck Woman are all still fan favourites to this day.

By Shane Pinnegar

 

Category: Shane's Rock Challenge