Hotter Than Hell: Kiss Turn Up the Heat (and the Mud)
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Everyone knows the Kiss of the stadium years: pyrotechnics, platform boots, a merchandising empire. Hotter Than Hell, released in October 1974, is the sound of the band before any of that was guaranteed.
It was their second album, made quickly after their self-titled debut failed to set the charts on fire. It also didn't go much better commercially. But if you want to hear Kiss as a hungry, sweaty, street-level New York rock band, this is the one.
Famously, the album sounds like it was recorded at the bottom of a well. The members themselves have complained about the muddy production for decades. But that murk is part of the charm. The guitars growl, the drums thud, and everything sounds like it's blaring out of a dive bar's busted speakers at 1 a.m.
The songs hold up beneath the sludge. The title track is a strutting, swaggering opener. "Got to Choose" is slow, lewd, and irresistible, and Ace Frehley's "Parasite" is a riff so good that Anthrax would later turn it into a thrash standard. "Goin' Blind" is the album's strangest moment, a dark, theatrical ballad that's unlike anything else in the band's catalog.
It isn't the band's most polished record, and that's the point. Hotter Than Hell is raw and loose and a little bit dangerous, the sound of four guys in greasepaint betting everything on loud guitars and a good hook.
PAIR IT WITH Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk by Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain. Kiss emerged from the same gritty New York scene, and this book is the best way to feel what that world was like: chaotic, funny, and a little bit filthy, much like the record.