Animalize (studio album) by Kiss

From Brandon8 08/12/2020 12:04

Awesome hard rock/heavy metal album in the vein of Creatures of the Night and Lick it up this one starts off with the “Fire” trilogy and never lets up. Perhaps this is their heaviest yet it’s best played while working out.

After a couple of blistering and outstanding records in Creatures of The Night and Lick It Up this was a first step in the direction of cruise control and mediocrety. To be fair...all of Paul's songs are as good as they should be. Its the inconsistency of Gene's contributions that brings the record down. At this time without Ace in the band it was pretty much Paul and Gene 50/50. Only "While The City Sleeps" really sticks out as a great Gene song. Its a shame too. Because Paul was really holding this together. He did an outstanding job of producing the record. It sounds great. Just needed better songs from Gene. He was...distracted.

Along with, asylum, one of the worst Kiss albums. They really didn't have a clue at this stage of their career. Some music you can't remember after you've heard it, this record, you can't even remember while it's playing. Terrible.

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Best Track: Heaven's on Fire

From junodog4 07/24/2012 16:01

I'm going to go crank this album and find me a scorpion to stare down.

Thank you for that! I had to go and check the album out and it's almost as awesome as you made out :)

From maxperenchio 02/06/2010 04:52

Revolver was the sound of an evolving social conscious- a sublime coming of age, an introduction to the "now" as we know it. Blonde on Blonde is the smokey breath of autumnal energy onto entangled lovers, tussling about within rustic apartment complexes. Pet Sounds beams with the weary eyed wonder and sadness of fading youth.

Animalize by KISS is the sound of fire-winged bionic falcons flying out of the mouth of a giant pharaoh-beast. It is probably the sweetest album of all time. Erupting out of the gates with a triple song attack i like to refer to as "the fire trilogy" (1. Into the Fire, 2. Heaven's on Fire, 3. Burn Bitch Burn) the Paul Stanley produced monolith of post-apocalyptic greatness boasts some of the most extreme and ruthless air guitar worthy moments in rock n roll. While I would never consider this album "challenging", it does beg some requirements from the listener;

The listener should be at least three of the following:
- black out drunk
- driving a sweet car over 90 miles per hour
- extremely pumped up
- about to get into a huge fight
- staring a mature scorpion in the face
- injecting questionable steroids
- aggressively horny
- hanging out with a group of dads

When Paul Stanley starts singing "Get All You Can Take", something starts to become obnoxiously evident- this album rules. Paul Stanley belts out what seem to be the highest notes of all time, even when he's singing low. Every lyric is about fire, sex, driving fast, and fire.

This is the only KISS album to feature virtuoso guitarist Mark St. John. After recording this album, he developed such terrible arthritis that he had to quit the band. Recording Animalize literally made his hands break. After odd-meter strut fest of Simmons' "Lonely is the Hunter', Paul Stanley delivers the most badass four minutes and one second of the entire 20th century with "Under the Gun". Now I don't want to get too deep into this, let it suffice to say that I can't listen to this song around other people because i'd punch their lights out.

"Thrills in the Night" is the sleazy-post-apocalyptic-hooker-story to end all sleazy-post-apocalyptic-hooker-stories. It oozes smut and genius. Paul Stanley sounds like he should be wearing a cyborg eye and singing on top of a toxic landfill. "While the City Sleeps" and "Murder in High Heels" are two Gene Simmons songs that some people (losers) could call "throwaway" because he was supposedly just fucking Cher all the time and never working on the album. In my opinion this makes those songs way more advanced. And thats what this album is, so advanced...sooooooo advanced.