KISS - (Music From) The Elder... thoughts?

YES..."THE OATH" ROCKS! Double-kick drum and galloping Maiden chugga chugga riffage!

 

I'm a big fan of The Elder. Wish my vinyl copy had the lyric sheet.

 

I have mixed feelings about "Mr. Blackwell". I don't like the major chunk of it but I love the middle instrumental breakdown. I'm noticing a trend of here of liking a lot of parts of songs but not many from start to finish.

 

HELL YEAH!

 

I absolutely *love* "The Elder". I think it's one of Kiss' very best albums. But doing a prog-rock flavored concept album in the early 80s wasn't exactly going to win the Kiss Army back, especially since the previous couple of albums were seen as flops.

 

Kiss just doesn't have the chops to pull off something like "Escape From The Island" and keep it interesting. Just sounds like some random chords repeated ad infinitum. Still decent though.

 

It's a damn shame that "The Oath" is so overlooked! It's one of the few tracks that flat out rocks and I daresay I get shivers when Paul Stanley sings the main vocal melody.

 

Sounds like it's gonna end on a high not. "I" is a great rockin' number with Paul doing his best Jerry Lee Lewis impersonation for a bit and more killer chunka chunka riffs.

 

The last minute of the album is a crazy ELP, vocodered Operation Mindcrime meets Highlander sort of thing...PERFECT!

 

I absolutely, absolutely love this record. There was never anything like it.

 

I actually like Hot in the Shade a lot.

 

I only really like two Kiss albums.......
(Music From) The Elder, shading Destroyer.

 

Time to revisit.

 

The Oath and "I" live

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2NmMLWe44s&feature=related

 

I love the album. I'm a little younger (39) so I started getting into Kiss in the 80's. Animalize and Asylum was the first cassettes I had by them, but then I got the Elder and I loved it right out of the gate. Maybe because I'm a Pink Floyd and Rush fan is maybe why I got into it. I was always into concept albums and I thought Kiss really made a great one.

 

It was a concept album, which ultimately fell "flat" w/Kiss Fans. Other than AWWH, I thought the rest of the disc, was some of the worst stuff they'd put out(And Im a huge KISS fan).

 

Nothing but love for this record from me ... from the time it was released!

 

I just got it recently, and it's NOT that bad. There are some parts that are overly done, but there are some parts there that rock. It's not bad.

 

OP, a great record.

 

I think the reason traditional KISS fans reject The Elder is that they traditionally reject all the "soft" and "not rocking" parts of bands music, which is IMHO really stupid since KISS (as a band or solo) were GREAT with those. Just a boy intro is a wonderful piece of music and I don't give a flying Space Ace if it "rawks" or not.

 

I played "The Elder" last night. Still love it!!

 

It's also not a record to kill your brain cells to and let's face it, with Kiss, most of the fans want to Keep It Simple Stupid.

 

I'm not into it, and I got it when it came out. I was pretty young, but the only music I cared about at that time was KISS. The music didn't feel right, or at least made me feel weird. I still listened to it all the time for some reason. When I listen to it now, I just think it sucks. It does sound like they put a lot of effort into it, and I'd rather listen to it over Crazy Nights. Now that's a real-deal crap record.

 

Reading through this thread inspired me to spin it again. I can't say I liked it back then, but it's grown on me in the last 15 years. I'd call it a good album, just not a good KISS album.
There was a nice comic adaptation in the KissNation marvel comic from the 90's I believe. It fleshes out the story quite a bit. I wish they'd done that originally.

 

It was a record that got me into KISS at the age of 14. I didn't like the "normal" KISS, sounded too dumb to me. The only song I liked at the time I think was I'm a legend tonight. At the time I was into all sorts of "mystical" hard rock and metal, you know Uriah Heep, Rainbow, Sabbath and Dio, Maiden's 7th Son, Manowar's Into Glory Ride etc. So when a friend told me got a tape of a very unusual KISS album about wizards, prophets and other cool stuff like that with violins, choirs etc I was really excited and fell in love with it from the first listen. Only then I started to slowly dig the other records.