Kiss 3: Dressed To Kill

Casablanca insisted they needed new product to keep sales up and running, so the third Kiss album—their third in this space of little over a year—was recorded quickly with label head Neil Bogart producing. That may have been the smartest move right there, since Dressed To Kill immediately sounds better than the massively muddy Hotter Than Hell. Cool cover, too.

But what about the tunes? They rock, of course. “Room Service” demonstrates Paul Stanley’s skill at stretching a metaphor well past its context. We get that life on the road is tough, and what better way to liven up yet another hotel room with something from the menu, but shouldn’t it be called something else when you’re at the airport or back in your home town? Gene Simmons takes over for the next two, first ragging on a “Two Timer”, then looking for solace with the “Ladies In Waiting”. Ace Frehley wasn’t ready to sing his own songs yet, which is how Peter Criss got to sing “Getaway”, which never once uses the noun form of the expression as stated in the title. If there’s anything that could be considered adventurous, the intricate acoustic intro to “Rock Bottom” would be it, especially since it has absolutely nothing to do with the song proper.

“C’mon And Love Me” sports a laugh-out-loud opening couplet, and a turn of phrase in the second verse that shows how fast they wrote the album, whereas “Anything For My Baby” updates classic ‘60s songwriting to their own template. “She” sports yet another killer riff, and piles on the imagery (“She walks by moonlight… enchanted starlight”) before deflating it (“she takes off her clothes”). There hasn’t been enough cowbell on the album yet, so “Love Her All I Can” serves it up. (Or maybe it’s supposed to sound like a drumstick on an aluminum can?) Allegedly, “Rock And Roll All Nite” was written to order at the last minute, and to their credit, they came up with a winner. If Kiss never did anything past this song, they’d still be remembered for it.

Smart boys do what they’re told, and Dressed To Kill fit the label brief perfectly. Here was another half hour of rockin’ songs for kids to blare in their bedrooms and cars, made to be replicated onstage. And that’s just what they did.

Kiss Dressed To Kill (1975)—3