PAUL STANLEY

You wanted the review, you got the review! Why anyone demanded a critique of a new PAUL STANLEY album is honestly beyond me — I always thought it was a foregone conclusion that KISS solo albums were just gonna suck, and there was nothing to be done about it. Hell, even back when the real lineup of the band was actually writing good songs, the only one who could pull a halfway decent solo record out of his ass was the terminally befuddled Ace Frehley, and his only got a pass because "Snowblind" and "Ozone" rocked balls. (You can take that cover of "New York Groove" and burn it in the same bonfire as your platform shoes and your Mork and Mindy board game).

"Live To Win" finds the prancing, pouting frontman shacked up with the some of the same type of 80's-bred shlockmeisters that made post-makeup KISS so fey and sackless. Desmond Child is all over this thing, and AEROSMITH neuterer Marti Fredriksen contributes to "Lift", one of the more embarrassing numbers. Stanley is in fine voice – there's no denying that his distinctive vocals not only put KISS on top, but are just about as strong as ever. The problem is, he's singing songs that make the back half of "Hot in the Shade" sound like "Destroyer".

Musically, "Live to Win" is stuck halfway through the door of a time machine – the songs are chock full of more programming and production than a LINKIN PARK single, but they're put together like rejected b-sides for "Tears Are Falling". Half the time, we're served up the embarrassing concoction of a middle-aged man singing what sounds like a BREAKING BENJAMIN song (the aforementioned "Lift", where at one point Stanley moans "salvation" in that already-dated "I'm singing through a paper towel tube" effect and you'll wanna kick your speakers over). The rest of the time, it's full on retro mode, including three stale power ballads full of syrupy strings and terrible clichés (did Klaus Meine help with titling "Loving You Without You Now"?) and cock rock rehash like "Bulletproof" and the discofied "Where Angels Dare". The nadir comes when the two eras clash — "All About You" is '80s cheese run through ProTools and dolled up with loops and post-millennial computer tricks like an old man at a singles bar with a bad toupee.

Throughout, the whole exercise just creaks, from its inane we're-all-winners lyrics to the recycled hooks and the generic, hard-rock-in-an-Army-commercial riffs. Much as Gene Simmons' solo album was a crystal-clear picture of The Tongued One as, well, an insufferable asshole, it seems Stanley really could be a chuckleheaded, terminally unhip party rock doofus. "Live To Win" is offensive not because it's terrible, but because it's too stupid to live — further proof that the neverending KISS farewell tour might not be such a bad idea, provided it keeps Paul and Gene out of recording studios for the foreseeable future.