KISS
has a long history of doing anything and everything to stay relevant. Be it removing their trademark makeup to
garner attention or completely changing their musical style to mimic what is
popular at the time. Another way the
band accomplishes this is by putting out Greatest Hits compilations at a fairly
regular clip, even when there is no reason to.
This year marks the fortieth anniversary of the “Four Who Are One” and
with that comes, of course, a new greatest hits album.
Let me
preface this review by saying that I have been a KISS fan for the majority of
my life, I have seen them in concert numerous times and would continue to go,
funds permitting, every year until they call it quits. That being said, I loved this collection of
KISS music. Can you get most of it if
you buy the box set? Sure. Can you get most of it if you buy the live
albums? Not in this form, but yes. If you have all of the studio albums or even just the box set, is this
disc entirely necessary? Not at
all. But you know what? Sometimes I want to hear “Strutter ’78” (from
the Double Platinum album – That’s
right, they put a song from a Greatest Hits album on another Greatest Hits
album, only KISS) and “Heaven’s on Fire” from the often overlooked Glam Metal
staple Animalize on the same
disc.
There
are a few nuggets in this double disc collection that do put it over the
top. First of all, there are a lot of
live cuts. This includes the standards
from Alive I-IV, but it also has some
that I don’t own, and honestly never knew were out there, like a live version
of that ode to sex on the road “Room Service” as well as killer live versions
of “Deuce”, “Firehouse”, and a personal favorite of mine “Cold Gin”. These little treasures make this more than
just another Greatest Hits album.
With a
career spanning forty years and twenty studio albums (not including the solo
albums) there are bound to be tracks left off that I (or any
other die-hard, card-carrying member of the KISS Army) felt should be included. The most glaring omission in my mind is the
ballad “I Still Love You”. The Creatures of the Night version is all
well and good, but the version from the Unplugged
concert is one of the best songs in the catalog. Leaving that out for a decent but not special
rendition of “Do You Love Me?” from the same concert seems like an odd choice
in my opinion. Other than that, the
track selection seems pretty standard for a Greatest KISS album (a lot of the
early stuff, even if it’s in different iterations, with a track here and there
from the early 80’s all the way up to the current albums). Something heavier from Revenge (the KISS grunge album) or more from Creatures of the Night would have been welcome additions but not
necessary on a Hits compilation.
All in
all, Decades of Decibels is a quality
album that doesn’t feel like a cash-grab from the world’s foremost cash-grab
band. If this is your first taste of
KISS beyond what you hear on the radio, it’s as good a place to start as any.
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