Gelap Pekat

KISS manager Doc McGhee has confirmed to Classic Rock magazine that the band's new album will be titled "Sonic Bloom" and that it will be released exclusively through Wal-Mart stores in the U.S. as part of a package including a disc of re-recorded KISS classics (already available in Japan) and a live DVD.

Due on October 6, "Sonic Bloom" features the following track listing:

01. Modern Day Delilah
02. Russian Roulette
03. Never Enough
04. Yes I Know (Nobody's Perfect)
05. Stand
06. Hot & Cold
07. All The Glory
08. Danger Us
09. I'm An Animal
10. When Lightning Strikes
11. Say Yah

Commented Classic Rock's Geoff Barton: "KISS promised to deliver a back-to-their-roots album and that's exactly what we've got. Recorded in the old-fashioned, analog way, it sounds spectacularly good — no ProTools nonsense in evidence here.

"The interesting thing is, it's not simply a homage the band's first few albums. There are even nods to records such as [1982's] 'Creatures Of The Night', which had Vinnie Vincent on guitar. KISS seem to have cleverly combined the best of all their eras into a single winning package."

Classic Rock has heard six of the album's tracks and has posted a full report at this location.

The editor of Guitar Player magazine, who had a chance to preview five songs off the LP last month, wrote about the new KISS material, "Paul [Stanley, KISS guitarist/vocalist] sings his ass off. Eric [Singer] plays some amazingly powerful drums. Gene [Simmons] was finally made to play all of his bass parts (apparently, in the past, if someone had a cool bass idea, he let them play it), and he DOES have a pretty driving sound. Finally, Paul and Tommy's [Thayer] guitars sound HUGE — with some fab riffs and '70s-style solos."

Thayer wrote and sang his first song on the album, while Singer also got his first opportunity to sing a lead vocal on an original song.

Simmons recently told The Canadian Press that there were no outside writers working on the Paul Stanley-produced disc. He also described the album's sound as "no strings, no keyboards, no synths, no tambourines, no nothing — just meat and potatoes."