Creatures of the Night: The KISS 40th Anniversary World Tour in Zurich

An elementary school teacher named Demon and a taxi driver named Starchild, along with Spaceman and Catman, have been making the world's stages unsafe for 40 years. Demon, Starchild, Spaceman and Catman are not Marvel's newest superheroes, but rock stars - the ones with the most famous make-up in music history. Fountains of fire, thunderbolts, lasers, strobe flashes, fake blood and confetti: when Kiss occurs, everything that the entertainment fundus has to offer is brought out. So it was on the anniversary show last Wednesday, June 10th, and the masked band performed their wonderfully anachronistic show in the Zurich Hallenstadion.

Until recently, I would never have dreamed that I would see Kiss again. Kiss should be seen once in a lifetime, if only because of the great show and that was it In 2010 the reason that I attended a men's event at the time. Kiss, I knew them from an early age, but actually it was always just the posters and patches from the others, I personally stuck with Black Sabbath, Jimy Hendrix, AC/DC and punk rock. Those were the days when you had to decide between bands, between styles of music, between attitudes towards life and image. Kiss, they were the made-up gentlemen in leggings, they were the posers and if I'm honest I never got much further into this band than "Detroit Rock City", "I was made for loving you" and "Lick it up». But now I've been brought back to the Hallenstadion and in front are really and truly Kiss, a voice announces the Best Agers in their comic costumes as the hottest band in the world. Even before the concert, you could make out countless Kiss T-shirts and various people between the ages of five and eighty painted with a kiss on them.

A Kiss concert is always a parade of fans. Some people had painted the letters K, I, S and S on their bare torsos in front of the Hallenstadion on Wednesday. Others, the youngest of whom was an estimated five years old, wore the same faces as their idols. Dozens of Spacemans and Catmans stood there and in the case of couples in love, it could even happen that Starchild kissed Demon deeply. But there was also a time in Kiss' 2014+ year career when the band's four characters no longer wanted to be fantastic rock 'n' roll beings. It was the time in the 100s when they took off their make-up masks, played an "MTV Unplugged" concert and, with this unmasking, briefly revealed everything that made their band a global brand. A global brand that was inducted into the Rock'n'Roll Hall of Fame in autumn XNUMX and which, in addition to countless merchandise items, now also includes the indoor professional football team LA Kiss. They have released twenty studio albums in their career and have sold more than XNUMX million records. They are the band with the most gold records in the US&A. They are number three worldwide, behind the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.

Creatures of the Night: The KISS 40th Anniversary World Tour in Zurich

When the black curtain with the four-letter band logo falls, all hell breaks loose on Wednesday evening. Laser flashes twitch through the hall. Flamethrowers flicker heatedly to the beat. Firecrackers explode and glistening firecrackers hiss across the stage. You can't tell the age of the band members behind all the make-up. Gene Simmons is 66 years old, Paul Stanley is 63, the other two are in their fifties. The experienced musicians stagger across the stage in mock youthful exuberance. Of course, you can hear how they struggle vocally with some pieces, especially Paul Stanley. You can tell the signs of age not only vocally, on stage a teleprompter helps with possible text errors. But whatever. That doesn't detract from the atmosphere and it's bombastic right from the start! In this exuberant fire magic, the four musicians with their black and white make-up horror clown faces, in black leather, studded fantasy costumes with dangerously high platform soles stand and hammer their song "Detroit Rock City" around the ears of the around 7000 visitors.

Nothing is more understandable than to dress in crazy costumes when you want to stand on a stage in front of a few thousand people who want fun. Kiss rule the hall, it is as if their super costumes give them super powers and with great respect you watch them at work. At regular intervals, when he knows his projection on the giant screens, Gene Simmons extends his famous tongue, which does not seem to have lost any of its length and elasticity, rolls his eyes, licks the strings of his guitar with an impressive flow of saliva, and lets himself in At one point the classic, never understood and never explained fake blood flow martially out of the well-inflated cheeks and while he is again the indestructible black and white monster from the seventies, he is always a tongue-in-cheek gentleman in his prime, the gives the world what the world obviously demands: rock music that wants to be party music and therefore, above all, has to be nonsense. Wonderfully anachronistic entertainment to very dull hard rock. But that's the way it is: Kiss, that means entertainment in 2015 as well, which meets the holy seriousness and the holy authenticity of the popular rock hero with make-up.

Creatures of the Night: The KISS 40th Anniversary World Tour in Zurich

Kiss is cult. kiss is party Kiss provide exuberant amazement for one and a half hours. They play "Deuce" and "Psycho Circus". The sound is excellent, the volume enormous, the use of pyrotechnics of lavish proportions. The impressive stage with its razor-sharp LED screens, spotlight batteries and hydraulic platforms takes up the entire width of the hall. During the wonderfully self-ironic band hit "Do You Love Me", the story of this rock'n'roll institution is told on the video wall in fast forward motion: the beginnings in New York, the golden years including the groundbreaking pyro shows, the groupies and the private jet with the Kiss lettering and after the years without make-up fortunately the way back to the great masquerade of the classic band past. Kiss turn the rock stage into a fairground complete with ghost train and cabinet of curiosities. Together they stage a rock'n'roll revue where nothing was saved. Well, a little maybe with the music. The performance of the US legends is a feast for the eyes and the pyrotechnician is actually the fifth member of the band.

Compared to some colleagues, Kiss have a big advantage. Kiss songs are actually pop songs, they are - to put it bluntly - closer to Abba than Led Zeppelin. Sure, the crunchy riff songs are a bit heavier, but the slyly calculated effect is quite similar. And Kiss have what they do completely under control, the fans in the Hallenstadion were certainly very satisfied. For his bass solo before "God of Thunder", Simmons, the man with the longest tongue in rock 'n' roll, hangs on an instrument in the form of a butcher's cleaver. He hammers short and crisp into the strings. He looks grimly into the distance in his kabuki comic face. And spits in the bright green headlights, everyone has been waiting for it, with fake blood around them. Bit disgusting, but always well received - as well as the ass-wagging and dance steps of his accomplice Paul Stanley. With "I Love It Loud" everything chants and at some point during "Love Gun" Paul Stanley actually hovers over the heads of the audience in the direction of the middle of the hall, where he simply continues to play on a pedestal. A little bit of "Rocky Horror Show" with monsters to cuddle and music with lots of movement, which is familiar and catchy in its classic simplicity.

Kiss - Rock and Roll all Nite - Zurich - 10.06.2015

Kiss offer themselves and us a beautiful, senseless evening and not only let it flash and fog, but also bang arrhythmically on stage, they still drive up with their instruments on absurd lifting platforms in order to continue making music there, splendor of sparks shoots them from the guitar necks, confetti flutters down on the people in white swirls, blasts of hot air reach you at the same moment that you see the volleys of fire shooting up on the stage, the beer mug trembles from the bass, charmer Paul Stanley on the guitar throws plectrums every second into the crowd. The mood that Kiss spreads is so good that even your own under-education doesn't become a problem. It's always easy to tune into the songs and shout out something about party, rock'n'roll and love. A great evening to remember for a long time. Sure, Zurich has “the best fans” or at least “the loudest”, and of course the Kiss show machine is as well oiled as it is routine, but it's still extremely entertaining. The mother of all poser rock bands has been one of the most popular live bands in the world for 40 years and with good reason, because Kiss do everything they can to support the most loyal fan base in show business "The Kiss Army", which gives them ups and downs to today, to offer what they deserve: «You wanted the best, you got the best. The hottest band in the world!»

setlist:

1. Intro: Good Times Bad Times (Led Zeppelin Song)
2. Detroit Rock City
3. Deuce
4. Psycho Circus
5. Creatures of the Night
6. I love it loud
7. War Machine (Gene Spits Fire)
8. Do you love me
9. Hell or Hallelujah
10. calling dr love
11. Lick It Up (with «Won't Get Fooled Again»)
12. Bass Solo (Gene spits Blood and flies)
13. God of thunder
14. Cold gin
15. Love Gun (Paul flies out to the crowd)
16. Black Diamond

Encore:

17. Shout It Out Loud
18. I Was Made for Lovin' You
19. Rock and Roll All Night
20. God Gave Rock'n'Roll to You II

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