I'm not going to pile on with the fans who just simply hate this album.. Start to finish it wasn't very many fans favorite and it had that feeling of confusion to me.. If I was confused everyone else had to be as well.. What was the direction of the band?? We endured a disco album.. Then a split of the four solo albums.. Follow that with a weak link between that era and Unmasked where the album seemed to be a joke on the fans "hey we're taking our makeup off.. check it out.." There was confusion on their part or was it they wanted to show how creative they could be?? They had to get a new drummer for this album because Peter Criss left for varying reasons.. (anybody want to guess?? Bueller ... Bueller) From the start to the end this wasn't KISS.. Or I should say it wasn't the KISS I liked to listen to.. Still I had the album in cassette form.. And to me if you are a true fan of the band (stand by them to the end do or die) then this should be in your collection.. For me, they lost me with the disco album Dynasty.. Forever that album will have the "disco" name to it because it was released at the end of the disco era in the late seventies.. I was one of those that hated the disco craze movement and when KISS jumped on the bandwagan of disco they left me and countless others behind scratching their heads.. Not each others heads but our owns.. You know what I mean.. The Elder was a slap in the face.. Well for those of us watching and waiting for the old KISS to wake up it was strike three on the will they ever wake back up again and play rock?? My feeling is that what happened to them next was a result of them being just way too big.. They ended.. The KISS I knew was over but they held on for dear life through so many changes.. But that's for another entry.. Here.. play the record..:
Symphonic KISS to put you to sleep by.. Truth be told nobody could reach them by now.. They had never had a failure in record sales.. People bought Dynasty (after the solo albums they had to) and people even bought Unmasked .. But the Elder was the last straw.. It was tough to listen to it.. To me at the time, I liked parts of it.. Ace Frehley was right to not be in the studio with them on this one.. In fact he was figuring out his exit strategy.. Sadly I felt like the band was losing their grip.. They weren't a hungry rock band anymore..
Gene Simmons has said as much that this album was more his fault than anyone else.. for this song he wrote a gem that was largely ignored.
To me it ranks closely to Beth as a classic KISS song.. However it was not taken to be that way.. "That's Gene Simmons?" The guy who wrote Christeen Sixteen?? or Plaster Caster.. What dirty old fruit for those two.. But that's what he was.. Truth is this was a stop gap, an album they had to make.. A mistake.. A true mistake and not just a slight "oops".. But a massive opposition by comparison to the greatness of Alive!.. Yeah that kind of clusterfuck.. It would cost them Ace Frehley and the general direction they were going in cost them Ace and Peter.. How do you recover from a mistake like this..
Personally I feel like they should either try to redo the album, either by redoing the album proper or adding to it in some way.. Or they should let it out to be done by a movie of some sort.. Either a Lord of the Rings type of farce or a modern day telling.. Or a animation piece.. Or all of the above.. This many years later why not try something like that.. The album is joked about but it is one of those that people generally wish the band would acknowledge as one of their own..
Or perform it as if it were your greatest selling albums like they did Alive!
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