Grimskull influences: Kiss - God Of Thunder

Kiss

Ace Frehley

Peter Criss

Gene Simmons

Paul Stanley

Our first relationship with Kiss, growing up in the 80's, was hearing "Crazy, Crazy Nights" on tv and radio. I guess we liked it, but not much more than other hits at the time. The second time was a few years later, when our cousin introduced it to us. We didn't like it very much at the time, because we were much more into metal, and Kiss wasn't heavy enough for us.

So it wasn't until 1994, when we bought their album "Revenge" that we got our eyes and ears open for their music. The music on that album was very heavy, but still had a rock 'n' roll edge, cool drumming and a great deal of humour.

So then I copied every album Kiss had released from my cousin, listened to it day and night, and instantly became a huge fan. I had always been a retroholic, fascinated by the sound, feel and fashions of decades long gone. And it was extremely exciting getting into Kiss, 'cause they had one of the coolest images I had ever seen. The make-up was awesome! I thought it was very mysterious, and I loved the fact that they had been hiding their true identities for the first 10 years of their carreers. They were like real-life superheroes!

But I would never have become a fan if it hadn't been for their music. Most of their hits were happy rock 'n' roll songs that didn't really appeal to me back then (now I love it all), but I soon discovered that they had some really cool HEAVY songs in their archive too.

My personal favorite was "God Of Thunder" sung by Gene Simmons. It was like a perfect match between his wicked image, the voice, the lyrics and the song. And song itself was just the kind of old school metal that I liked, with a great chorus.

Cheers, TJ