Label: Mercury
Year: 1984
Home: New York
Members: Paul Stanley ~ lead vocals/rhythm guitar/bass
Gene Simmons ~ lead vocals/bass
Eric Carr ~ drums/b. vocals
Mark St. John ~ lead guitar
Additional: Bruce Kulick ~ guitar solo
Jean Beauvoir ~ bass
Desmond Child ~ b. vocals
Allan Schwartzberg ~ drums
Mitch Weissman ~ guitar
I like this album. Yet, it leaves me not quite shaken to core like other Kiss albums. Its not their worst album, but its also not their best. It doesn't hit me in the gut like I expect Kiss will. I enjoy listening to it, but aren't rockin' in my chair. It feels like Kiss. It sounds like Kiss. It rocks hard like I want Kiss to rock, but yet I feel left wanting in a strange way. My first thought: the drums need to be louder. A band can't rock if the drums are tucked into the mix as just a rhythm instrument. Eric Carr was a great drummer, better than Peter Criss, & dropping him in the mix muzzles the power of the album. That brings me to the problem of Animalize. It rocks, but doesn't have power. Kiss is a band that makes up for all of its weaknesses with a power that other bands try to achieve but can only dream of. Its like their oversized egos come through the music. That doesn't happen here. The album feels glossy & like Kiss trying to be Kiss, but they've left their egos at home & just want to play nice. Kiss without egos is like Gene not boasting about his life ... something just isn't right. All the pieces are here, but not the passion, or in Gene's case the growl, that weaves through everything Kiss does. This is the only Kiss album with Mark St. John, replacing Vinnie Vincent, & he's a great guitar slinger. "While The City Sleeps" has a lightening guitar solo that Ace Frehley could never play, even in his dreams, that almost is too much as it leaves no bodies standing. St. John, Vincent & later Bruce Kulick & Tommy Thayer are all highly competent guitarists. In technical ways they might all be better than Ace, but all share one problem that weakens them all in Ace's looming shadow: he was a sloppy guitarist at times & a composer with a strange inner music that poured out, yet always recognizable because somehow he straddled the bridge of genius vs madman, great guitarist vs train wreck. St. John & company are all superb players, but none are distinct, none ever play a bad note, none ever put their neck on the line, none ever look bad. None are the Spaceman floating in space. None are madmen. They are too perfect & Kiss is not perfect. Kiss is rough around the edges. Kiss is four madmen all competing for the same spotlight. This is where Animalize fails. Its good music, but its not mad. Its not an inspired madman looking to create some wild concoction, but a very un-mad scientists playing it safe, following the rules, being nice, not wanting to make waves. Essentially, not wanting to be an animal. Mentioning St. John is not meant to list him as the problem, as he's not. He is simply the symptom of the larger problem that Gene & Paul are letting Igor run the experiments & he's playing it safe to not get caught. Kiss are criticized for an output in '80's that suffers from trying to sound like every other hair metal band. When commercial success wavered they didn't keep doing what had worked, but tried to play the game according to the rules of the bands on the scene, the irony is many of those bands were inspired by Kiss breaking the rules. There are no rules broken by Kiss on Animalize. Its a safe moment in their catalog with some songs that are not embarrassments, but imagine them being played by the unsafe '70's Kiss & this would be an album that lives up to its name. It doesn't sound inspired, nor am I inspired listening. This is what happens when you follow the rules. The outcome is an animal in name only & Igor is not quite as mad as his boss.
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