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Hot in the Shade

Kiss - Hot in the Shade Audio CD

A fair review of the Kiss "Hot in the Shade" Audio CD. Please note that the below review is the views of the authors, and authors only. You can get a complete list of all Kiss reviews here, or go back to the Kiss tabs.

Band: Kiss
Title: Hot in the Shade
Rating:

Release Date: 1989-10-03
Media: Audio CD

Tracks: 1: Rise to It 2: Betrayed 3: Hide Your Heart 4: Prisoner of Love 5: Read My Body 6: Love's a Slap in the Face 7: Forever 8: Silver Spoon 9: Cadillac Dreams 10: King of Hearts 11: Street Giveth and the Street Taketh Away 12: You Love Me to Hate You 13: Somewhere Between Heaven & Hell 14: Little Caesar 15: Boomerang

Maybe too commercial, but good
Hot in the shade isn't my favorite recording of KISS, I like better Revenge, Unmasked, Destroyer, Unplugged. I cannot consider myself as a KISS fan, but I grow up drawing their make ups in my notebooks when I was five. . . but Hot in the shade contains two or tree songs very good, the another ones not famous but very clear production, nice melodies and good lyrics. .

NEEDS REMASTERING
more of a straight up rock cd than other KISS releases. this cd has 15 songs- some better than others. remastering would help it. does sound disjointed. never figured out why they stopped here with the remastering project. maybe remixing this one, crazy nights and unmasked. as for reviewers talking about the "read my body" def leppard comparisions. "all hell's breakin' loose" on lick it up and "get all you can take" on animalize. weren't both of these before "pour some sugar on me". mutt lange also wrote"lovin' every minute of it" for loverboy before he and joe elliot wrote "sugar".

Sorry but this ain't good enough
Far. I'll have to disagree with some reviewers concerning the non-make-up years: Lick It Up, Animalize and Revenge blow Hot In The Shade away. Ok, HITS sound a little less commercial than Crazy Nights, less keyboards and all, but are the songs any good? Few. Paul sounds like he's trying too hard for a hit, something he eventually got with Forever. To this day I feel this song has been a terrible mistake - it forever associated Kiss with a meaningless silly ballad. Why in the world does Paul need to write songs with Michael Bolton or Desmond Child??? You Love Me To Hate You hurts my poor ears. At least Gene has better songs but even them aren't that good. This is KISS when good ideas had run out and Ace and Peter were terribly missed. I guess the best thing on it is the cover!.

Deceiving at first listen, it does get better over time.
But I don't care. Ok, there are already DOZENS of reviews posted for HITS, so what are the chances anyone will read mine, let alone vote for it? Slim at best. HITS is not one of Kiss's standout albums, but I do like it, so here's my review.

At first listen, I was not impressed. In fact, I was pretty disappointed. Even after a couple of listens, I couldn't remember any of the songs except Hide Your Heart (which got alot of airplay as the first single) and Forever (because it was "the ballad" of the album). This led to me feel the album was a throwaway.

But I do love 90% of Kiss's music overall, so a few years later on a long car ride (about 36 hours round-trip), HITS was one of the tapes I decided to bring along. I figured I'd try to get more familiar with it. With 15 tracks, the album was huge for its time (released 20 years), so maybe I just needed more time with the songs. Well, surprisingly, alot of the songs did get my attention once I was able to sort them out in my head.

The opener, Rise To It, sounds like Bad Seamstress Blues from Cinderella's "Long Cold Winter" album. . . very bluegrass/hillbilly sounding intro. But after that, the song itself is actually pretty rockin'. I think its downright awesome with the alternating Paul/Gene vocals midway in. This is Paul's song, overall.

Other Paul songs I took to were Hide Your Heart (no big surprise) and King of Hearts. KoH just really rocks my socks off! Nice guitar work & Paul sings his heart out (no pun intended).

In general, though, I preferred Gene's songs on this album. Betrayed & Prisoner of Love seemed really inspired to me, like he took his time with them, more so than his Animalize & Asylum efforts. And I can't say why, but I could imagine him singing Love's A Slap In The Face in full Demon-costume during the Dynasty/Unmasked era.

It was also nice to finally hear Eric Carr sing an original song on a studio album. Little Caesar may not have been an instant classic on its own, but it was a good song overall. Just sad that he finally sings lead, and it turns out to be his final album before his untimely death due to cancer. (Ironically, Bruce Kulick would also finally sing lead vocal on his last Kiss album, Revenge. Thankfully, this was not due to death. )

So those are the standout songs from HITS in my opinion. . . Rise To It, Betrayed, Hide Your Heart, Prisoner Of Love, Love's A Slap In The Face, King Of Hearts, and Little Caesar. I liked Forever, too, but it got so much airplay I've grown bored with it. The rest of the songs. . . not horrible, not spectacular, just kind of there.

Hopefully, despite all the other reviews, someone will read my review, give those few tracks a re-listen, and find more enjoyment out of HITS than they originally had.

Not their shining moment but better than most
Going for a more vintage sound without totally diving into a carbon copy of their self-titled debut. While this is far from Kiss' best studio album; Destroyer and Creatures hold those titles, Hot In the Shade is by far the best of the Non-Makeup years.

During the 80's Kiss basically bounced back and forth. There was The Elder; good album, but disliked by most fans. Creatures; Amazing album that was their heaviest to date. Lick It Up; Good, but a disappointing follow-up to Creatures. Animalize; Ok, Gene's songs totally stunk. Asylum; again ok, and again Gene drops the ball. Crazy Nights; Dreadful, over produced and their weakest song writing.

So when they returned with Hot In The Shade, I was not only pleased to see a much longer album (15 songs compared to the usual 9), but the album is pretty much listenable from start to finish. Stand out tracks are Hide Your Heart (Paul rocks this, where as mangled it), Forever, You Me to Hate You, and Betrayed. The production was much more raw sounding compared to the 3 over polished albums that proceeded it. If only they could have continued on this streak for Revenge; an album that as much as I want to like it, I just can't get into save for a couple songs. .

You can see a complete list of all Kiss discography, or go back to the Kiss tabs. There is also a good guide on how to read guitar tabs here.