by Randy Duckworth

Created on: February 01, 2010

I have been an obsessed fan of KISS since the age of six. I have seen them perform live more than twenty times since the age of nine. I have collected every album, every DVD release, as well as countless pieces of merchandise and memorabilia that the band has marketed over the years. They are one of a handful of bands whose music I will always purchase without question. Knowing that, I'm sure you can imagine my excitement when the band announced that they were planning to release a CD of new tunes in the fall of 2009! The word elated doesn't even begin to cover my reaction to the news!

Thanks to an exclusive deal with the nation's largest retail chain, the band's latest CD, Sonic Boom, hit the shelves of Walmart stores on October 6, 2009. Sonic Boom is the first disc of new material from the legendary rockers in nearly eleven years, and their forty-third release overall. Of course, they hyped the album endlessly. They promised that it would be classic KISS in every sense, and that it would hearken back to their glory days of the 1970s. Needless to say, I was counting the days impatiently.

As much as I wanted to believe the hype, I have to admit that part of me was skeptical. I knew that I would enjoy the final product regardless, because I always do with KISS. However, I also knew that they had a huge past to live up to, and it wasn't going to be easy to achieve some of the things they were claiming...especially when one stops to consider the many things they seemed to have working against them. After all, founding members Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley were now preparing to enter their sixties, and they had not produced any new music as a band in more than a decade.

In addition, their last release, 1998's "Psycho Circus," had been something of an oddity. While it did have some very good moments, it was not a very cohesive effort. In my opinion, it often sounded so disjointed that it was difficult to listen to. Many people also felt cheated by the fact that they had sold that record as a reunion album with former members Ace Frehley and Peter Criss. Although Ace and Peter did indeed appear on the album, their contributions to it had been minimal. In fact, most of the guitars were completed with the help of session musicians...even including former guitarist Bruce Kulick on one track.

As I waited for Sonic Boom to be released, I kept coming back to all of those reasons in my mind, and I have to say that it only fueled my skepticism. I knew that this would

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