Review Summary: Technically proficient, but seriously lacking in soul. Stick with Paul Stanley.
Unlike the rest of the KISS solo albums, I have a personal history with
Ace Frehley. I saw it long ago, in a bargain bin at a long-since closed neighbourhood record store. At the time, I was entranced with AC/DC, Nirvana, Slipknot, Linkin Park and Papa Roach, but I was also frantically hunting down whatever whiffed of hard rock or heavy metal. And, of course, being an avid reader of metal magazines, I had also heard extensively of KISS, who were basically equated to the second coming of Christ by rock fans and experts alike. So, of course I gave
Ace Frehley a spin, albeit a brief, evaluatory one. In the end, I couldn’t see what all the fuss was about, and decided that maybe a solo album by a member of a band I didn’t know yet wasn’t the best starting point for me. Long story short, I didn’t get it.
Now, it’s years later, and I’m doing the KISS discog. Since that long-gone year, I have listened to hundreds of records by thousands of bands; my tastes have expanded vastly and also defined themselves quite a bit. So perhaps listening to Ace’s solo effort now, my opinion will have somewhat changed, right? Well…not quite.
You see, while not as atrociously bad as
Gene Simmons, Ace Frehley fails to live up to the hype it is subject to. No, this is not the “best” of the solo albums – after three albums, that honor still belongs to
Paul Stanley, and somehow I don’t think
Peter Criss is going to do anything to change my mind.
Still, there are some positive points to this solo effort from the man who gave KISS the very idea to make solo albums. He made it look like a bid to avoid the end of the band, but listening to this album, one gets the idea that what Ace
really wanted was an outlet for his compositions. A notoriously shy composer and an even shier singer – throughout all his years of KISS, he wrote two songs and sang in one – Frehley takes the opportunity to break free from the iron-fist ruling of Stanley and Simmons and makes the most of it. Finally overcoming his shyness, Ace takes it upon himself to deal with all guitars, bass, keyboards and vocals on this album. Unlike his bandmates, who surrounded themselves with guests, Ace basically leaves the bulk of the work to himself and drummer Anton Fig, who had done and would do some studio work for KISS. Together with a few songwriters and a couple more session musicians, the two concoct an album which, while technically proficient, is seriously lacking in passion.
In fact,
Ace Frehley is undoubtedly the better-played of the four solo albums (again, I don’t think
Peter Criss holds any surprises). This only makes sense, since Ace was the most technically proficient member of KISS. The whole album is rife with guitar doodlings, elaborately tecchy soloing and song ideas that sought to expand on the basic clunky-rock sound of Frehley’s main band. Unfortunately, the songs’ structure and construction is itself flawed, with tracks often running overlong and abusing chorus repetition.
First and foremost, however, this album is forgettable. The initial speed and heaviness of
Rip It Out and the bluesy leanings of
Speeding Back To My Baby may capture your attention, but both these songs seem to be twice as long as they, in fact, are. The next few songs just go by your ears leaving little impression apart from “hey, when is this going to end?”. Even instrumental
Fractured Mirror seems overindulgent, with its duration far outdoing its interest.
Certainly, there are a couple of exceptions.
Ozone may convince you with its hypnotic circular-logic lyrics and instrumentation. The general idea is that this i show Ace would talk a girl into doing what he wanted her to – by repeating the same arguments over and over until she couldn’t say no. Similarly, Russ Ballard’s
New York Groove grabs the listener on the force of its funky beat and some catchy guitar doodling. But overall, nothing in this record will excite you too much. Not like, say, the songs on
Paul Stanley made you want to throw your fist in the air and ROCK OUT!
In the end, the listener is left with the impression of a technically proficient, but rather soulless album – the typical, wanky “guitarist album”. The difference is that, mercifully, there are no half-hour solos on any of the songs here, but Frehley definitely shouldn’t be taking songwriting tips from Gene Simmons. So no, I still wouldn’t have bought
Ace Frehley today. It was the album, not me, who was wrong. Stick with
Paul Stanley.
Recommended Tracks
Rip It Out
New York Groove
