Review Summary: Third time's the charm.
As some people say, “third time’s the charm”.
I’m sorry, but there is no better way to describe KISS’s situation than by resorting to a clichéd adage.
Dressed to Kill is everything
KISS and
Hotter Than Hell could never manage to be, and it deservedly put the group at the top of the charts, where Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons had wanted to be from the beginning.
Once again,
Dressed to Kill represented a very smart manoeuvre from the duo, who were quickly becoming master entrepreneurs. After the mixed results of
Hotter Than Hell’s heavier sound and experimental production, KISS returned to the roots with their third album, and the results were no less than stellar.
On the surface,
Dressed to Kill is not very different from its predecessors. Once again, it’s ten songs in a short running time, making for a breezy, pleasant listening experience. But the quality of the music itself is improved tenfold with relation to their promising debut and its drab follow-up.
Sonically, the album is a mix of the previous two. Gone is the unrelenting, sludgy heaviness of
Hotter Than Hell, but gone also is the youthful New York Dolls innocence of the debut. In its place is a pure, straightforward hard rock sound in which a few throwback catcalls are interspersed. After his prominence in the previous album, Ace Frehley barely solos on this one, but when he does, it’s always good, sometimes even providing a song’s sole reason for interest (
Love Her All I Can). Peter Criss, on the other hand, finally comes into his own as a drummer, straying away from the exceedingly basic beats of the previous albums to show us that
he can really play.
As for the songs, they maintain their simplistic structure, but regain that bounce in their step that they so sorely lacked in
Hotter Than Hell. And the production is crisp and clear, putting either of the previous albums to shame. But what’s more important, the songwriting is better than it ever had been thus far. Out of the album’s ten songs, eight are good to very good, and only one (
She) is declaredly bad. The standouts are as clear as ever, but for once, the backup songs can more than hold a candle to them. The result is a fully-rounded and very satisfying listening experience.
The album literally opens with a standout.
Room Service may be one of the most imbecilic metaphors for sex of all time, but it sure makes for a good song, with laugh-out-loud lyrics about being bored in a hotel room/plane/at home only to solve it with a last-minute, Godsend fellatio. It’s a typical example of a song that just clicks, from the good lyrics to the catchy riff, and it’s sure to get your foot tapping. Matching it blow by blow is
Rock Bottom, a song which starts with a perfectly expendable minute and a half of guitar doodling before too abruptly launching into another rockin’ track with a great chorus, in some ways similar to
Room Service. More subdued and discreet is
Getaway, a track which prefers to charm its way into your heart with repeated listens. In its bid for attention against the more immediate
Anything For My Baby, it wins out on the long run, with its competitor becoming tiresome much more quickly.
And then, of course, there is
Rock’n’Roll All Night.
Although it is not the best song on the album, this track immediately acquires standout status. After all, it was KISS’s first bona-fide hit (i.e., song that got well-known outside their fanbase), and it helped forge all that KISS would come to be. If it wasn’t for
Rock’n’Roll All Night, we wouldn’t have patented KISS Coffins™. And the fact is, it’s a damn good song in its own right. Driven by dynamic percussion from Peter Criss, it has exactly the party-hearty attitude and big, boisterous riffs that helped make hard rock such a well-known and well-liked style. It does get a little carried away with chorus repetition, and it kind of deserved a solo, but it nevertheless deserves the final spot in our countdown list.
Right behind these four leaders, and bringing up the pack, are songs like
Anything For My Baby and the sublimely stupid
Come On And Love Me, a track that is made both better and worse by its unbelievably lunk-headed lyrics (
”She’s a prancer/a romancer/I’m a Capricorn and she’s a Cancer” or
”I’m a man/I’m no baby/And you’re looking every inch a lady” are just the two prime examples). Behind them, making up a respectable pack, are the remaining tracks, with only the plodding, hopelessly uninteresting
She lagging far behind.
However, not all is roses in the realm of makeup and tuxedos. Some of the song structures are quite mediocre when you stop to really appreciate them. KISS show that they are capable of delivering satisfying, fully-rounded lyrics on
Room Service, so why do
Two-Timer and
Ladies In Waiting merely repeat two or three sections ad nauseam? Plus, this album leaves us with a sense of frustration: it could so easily have been a five out of five! All they needed to do was get rid of the shamefully bad track (
She) and tone down Frehley’s pointless wank session at the beginning of
Rock Bottom, and they’d have an all around winner.
As it is, however, it’s still one of the high points, if not
THE high point, of KISS’s career, and deserves a place in the annals of hard rock history. If you’ve never heard it, go do it now. It’s well worth thirty minutes of your time.
Recommended Tracks
Room Service
Getaway
Rock Bottom
Rock'n'Roll All Night
