KISS Is 'Still The Hottest Band In Any Land'

KISS' official web site has been updated with the following press release:

Where other bands have fan clubs, KISS has a full-fledged Army of the most rabid and loyal true believers in the world. For more than three decades, the KISS Army has wanted and demanded nothing less than the best from their band and across all those years, that's exactly what KISS has always delivered.

The biggest, baddest, most triumphant show band in rock & roll history, KISS has weathered and transcended the fads, follies and delusions of an industry based on the quick buck and the passing fancy.

In the past thirty years, a thousand musical trends and genres have come and gone and come again — sensitive singer-songwriters, glam, metal, punk, alternative, garage, roots, new wave, goth, hardcore, grunge, industrial, techno, retro, hip-hop, teenybop pop, boy bands, girl groups, etc. etc. — and through it all, there has always been KISS.

KISS endures because the band is archetypal, iconic, larger-than-life and louder than thunder. The band, the brand, the blood, the fire and fireworks, the spectacle, the shock and awe and wonder of it all. KISS has always given its Army the best rock in the world and neither side has ever settled for less. And, for all the flash and arena-sized theatricality, the core of KISS is really the music, as potent and powerful and connected to the true heart of rock & roll as any band or artist or performer of the past century.

For the KISS Army, the release this Halloween of "KISSology: Volume One 1974-1977" marks the arrival of nothing less than a Holy Grail: 6 solid hours of vintage KISS going all the way back to the deep early roots of the band's classic line-up — Gene Simmons, Paul Stanley, Ace Frehley and Peter Criss — captured and re-mastered on 2 state-of-the-art DVDs featuring more than 70 live performances and four full concerts bundled along with unreleased tracks and never-before-seen footage.

The mind-boggling first volume of a definitive three part collection (Volumes Two and Three are being readied for release in 2007) presented by VH1 Classic, "KISSology: Volume One 1974-1977" is a showcase of pristine digitally-restored video coupled with a 5.1 audio mix to provide both stunning visual quality and powerhouse finely-detailed sound designed to meet the approval of the most demanding KISSmaniac.

"KISSology: Volume One 1974-1977" goes all the way back one of the band's earliest live performances in the New York pre-punk glam rock bar scene of the early 1970s before tracing the rocket-paced transformation of KISS into international rock gods who filled the world's largest arenas as the undisputed hottest band in the land by 1977.

A dream come true for the KISS Army, "KISSology: Volume One 1974-1977" contains seldom seen high points of KISStory including significant never- before-available material drawn from the band's own personal video vaults. In addition to four full concerts from the peak of the band's first golden era, the DVD set also features notorious television interviews, early KISS music videos and rare unreleased tracks. Included in the lavish "KISSology: Volume One 1974-1977" package are spell-binding eyewitness liner notes penned by the members of KISS themselves.

Disc One of "KISSology: Volume One 1974-1976" takes a look back at an early bar-band KISS (freshly risen from the shards of WICKED LESTER) already thinking much bigger than any of their contemporaries. 1974 is covered with a live concert in Long Beach as well as KISS's televised appearances on ABC's "In Concert" and an interview/performance on "The Mike Douglas Show". By 1975, KISS was playing San Francisco's fabled Winterland, headlining NBC's "Midnight Special" and making videos for "C'mon & Love Me" and their signature "Rock and Roll All Night", all included on "KISSology". In 1976, KISS came to Detroit for an incendiary concert at the Motor City's Cobo Hall, captured on Disc One of "KISSology".

Disc Two of "KISSology" picks up the threads of 1976 with the band's interview and performance of "Black Diamond" on "So It Goes", a must-see and much-discussed interview and performance of "King of the Nighttime World" on "The Paul Lynde Halloween Special", and personal band footage from May 1976. The 1977 material on Disc Two captures the band at the pinnacle of its international fame, performing to tens of thousands of fans at the legendary Budokan Hall in Tokyo in April '77 and, a little more than a month later, headlining "Don Kirshner's Rock Concert". Disc Two closes with scorching concert footage from The Summit in Houston, Texas on September 2, 1977, showing KISS laying down the creed that still beats at the heart of the band: Rock & Roll All Night and Party Every Day!!!

KISS has recorded more gold records than any other American band in history and has sold 80+ million records throughout their career. The group has earned more than 55 gold, platinum and multi-platinum awards since receiving its first gold record for "KISS Alive!" in 1975. KISS has performed more than 3500 concerts in front of nearly eighty million fans in virtually every country on planet earth.

"KISSology Volume One 1974-1977" provides ample evidence of why KISS has lasted so long and continues to mean so much to so many millions of people. KISS is 100% dedicated to the heart and soul and power of ROCK and when the house lights go down, KISS is still the hottest band in any land.