CoronaVinyl Day 463 (K): Hotter Than Hell by KISS

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Today's CoronaVinyl category is "K," and I still have a few KISS albums to get through.  Today, I listened to their sophomore album, 1974's Hotter Than Hell.

Released a mere eight months after the band's self-title debut, Hotter Than Hell was far from a big hit, only reaching #100 on the Billboard album chart.  The only single released from the album, "Let Me Go, Rock 'n' Roll," didn't chart, making it the only KISS album from the '70s (aside from Peter Criss's 1978 "solo" album) that didn't have a charting single.

But the band was building up its fanbase through their electric live shows, and in another year, they would release what would become the standard for live albums, Alive!  Five of the 16 songs on Alive! would come from Hotter Than Hell -- "Got to Choose," the title track, "Parasite," "Watchin' You," and "Let Me Go, Rock 'n' Roll" -- and they would become fan favorites and live staples as a result.

One of the strangest KISS songs ever is "Goin' Blind," which, I kid you not, is a song sung from the point of view of a 93-year-old man who is attempting to woo a 16-year-old female ("I'm ninety-three, you're sixteeeeen" is an actual lyric).  It doesn't hold up well, though apparently one of the original verses referenced a "little lady from the land beneath the sea" -- which Gene Simmons revived during the band's 1996 MTV Unplugged show -- and thus, in an apparent attempt to tamp down the creepiness, some have hypothesized that the song's narrator is a dying sea captain who is trying to woo a mermaid.  But he's still 93 and she's still 16, so I don't know if that makes it any better.

Anywho, despite the albums relative commercial failure, I still think it's an awesome album.  The band was honing their sound, making arena-ready hard rock music that would soon take over the world.  And as was their Beatle-like commitment to spreading the love around, both with songwriting and lead vocals (though it would be several years until Ace Frehley was comfortable enough to get behind the mic), of the ten songs on the album, Paul Stanley wrote or co-wrote five, Gene wrote or co-wrote four songs, and Ace wrote or co-wrote three, while Paul sang lead vocals on three songs, Gene on five, and Peter on two.

Favorite Song on Side 1:  "Parasite"
Penned by Ace and sung by Gene, "Parasite" has an infectious driving guitar riff from Ace, with howling vocals from Gene in the verses, mellowed by more harmonic choruses.

Favorite Song on Side 2:  "All the Way"
The second side kicks off with one of my favorite underrated KISS gems, "All the Way."  Gene wrote the song and sang lead vocals.  It's a nice, catchy rock song.  Until a few years, I had been mishearing the chorus as "You just keep talking about her / Whoa no, 'til you're gonna get louder / One of these days you'll push me all the way."  Turns out, it's "You just keep talkin' louder / Complain to your mother and father / One of these days you'll push me all the way."  I still sing it the wrong way.