Review Summary: Well, well, well...a GOOD 80's KISS album. Who'd have guessed it?!
Ever since I started out on this KISS discography thing, I’ve been hearing horrendous things about
Asylum. This very site is proof, with the record’s overall rating standing at an abysmal 1.9/5. So after barely making it through the turgid cesspools of
Lick It Up and
Animalize, I was ready for the worst hard rock album ever produced in the history of the world.
This isn’t it.
In fact, this may well be KISS’s best album of the decade, standing toe to toe with not only
Creatures Of The Night but also historic records of yesteryear such as
Love Gun or
Rock And Roll Over. And while this definitely won’t be the one to dethrone
Destroyer – and although the concept of “good” is rather relative when it comes to KISS – there is no doubt that
Asylum is, by itself, a strong 80’s pop-metal record.
Maybe this has something to do with the fact that
Asylum debuts KISS’s second really permanent guitarist, in the form of Bruce Kulick. Older brother Bob was of course an old acquaintance of the band, but Junior owes him nothing in terms of technique and presence. Much more suited to the KISS sound than the overtly technical Vinnie Vincent and Mark St. John, the guitarist would help the formerly-masked rockers at a time when they most needed it.
The stability in the formation – which remains otherwise unaltered with singer and guitarist Paul Stanley, singing bass player Gene Simmons and drummer Eric Carr – permeated right through to the songwriting, which regains the focus it had lost after
Creatures Of The Night. Most of the songs on here are fair to rather good, and while there are no whoppers like
Crazy Crazy Nights or
Is That You, there are a good handful of solid pop’n’roll tracks.
Asylum also gains the distinction of being the only KISS album from the mid-to-late 80’s to break the mold of “great single, good backup song, the rest is filler”. Here, the single is far from the best song, and the filler is reduced to a couple of less impressive tracks. Moreover, nearly every track here will instill a reaction; you may love it or hate, but no more than a couple of tracks will leave you indifferent.
But let’s start with the promo track, shall we?
Tears Are Falling is, in my head, inseparable from its video, in which four courtisans from the court of Louis XVI jump around spasmodically like epileptic kickboxers in neon-colored thighs. Taken out of the context of that horrible piece of cinematography, however, this is a decent song, not a standout, but certainly the most immediately ingratiating (and probably the one you will listen to more often).
Then there are a couple of throwaway tracks which will elicit very little reaction –
Love’s a Deadly Weapon and
Radar For Love, although the latter does have a pretty cool acceleration midway through – and one completely turgid track,
Who Wants To Be Lonely, the only outright bad moment of this album. The rest of the songs range from the interesting –
King Of The Mountain, I’m Alive – to the near-standouts (
Trial By Fire, Secretly Cruel), to the
actual standouts, in this case
Any Way You Slice It and the fun, catchy
Uh! All Night. The first is one of the many examples of fast rockin’ beats present on this album, where no less than four songs boast speedy tempos, including two back-to-back. The second wins mostly on the strength of its chorus, which proclaims that
”id you work all day you gotta uh! all night”. Exactly what “uh!” is is of course up to the listener to decipher – and the mind does wander…All in all, a fun track, and one you’ll be looking forward to.
But there is more to love on this album – Bruce Kulick’s solo on
King Of The Mountain, the sudden revving-up of
Radar For Love, the intro riff and pre-chorus to
Tears Are Falling…in short, more than enough to make up for the two albums of turgid dreck that came before and the two that would come afterwards. As it is,
Asylum stands as a misunderstood and underrated beacon of light in the otherwise total darkness of unmasked-era KISS.
Recommended Tracks
Any Way You Slice It
Tears Are Falling
Uh! All Night
