Ikons

Where Kiss' 2001's box set abounds with rarities and 2006's Alive! 1975 – 2000 chronicles the live recordings, 2008's Ikons is for vintage Kiss fans. It doesn't go past the original line-up and each member gets his own disc of 14 tracks, making for a total of 56 songs here. The order goes: Gene Simmons, Paul Stanley, Ace Frehley and Peter Criss. The dark and foreboding "God Of Thunder" opens Gene's disc, setting the tone with the kind of demonic, comic-book darkness that makes up the essence of his conceptualized, blood-burping, hard-rocking incubus. "Radioactive" grooves with kabuki-infused glam, but the Beatlesque "See You Tonite" is unfortunately absent. Introducing Paul's disc with the anthemic, bare-chested "Detroit Rock City" was as good an idea as ending it with 1979's "I Was Made for Lovin' You," the band's fleeting foray into disco. It's too bad that Ace is best known for his stompy cover of Hello's "New York Groove" because his disc should have launched with an original tune like the debaucherously spaced-out "Snow Blind." Did you know that Garth Brooks covered Peter Criss' "Hard Luck Woman" in 1994? Yes, "Beth" is also here, but the cat-man's Rod Stewart rasp shines best in the epic "Black Diamond."