[rating=2.50]








Before even listening, Sonic Boom suffers from some degree of disingenuousness just because they dressed Tommy Thayer and Eric Singer up as Ace and Peter. C’mon guys, at least Eric Carr and Vinnie Vincent got their own Kiss persona. And gee, the cover art looks a little familiar too.

Sonic Boom does look back fondly on the band’s classic years, particularly the loose, more distilled rock n roll of their first three albums. On the surface, that probably makes it their best album in a long, long time. Even their better albums of the last 30 years have generally been nods to current musical trends, so at least now they’re giving a nod to their own success. Granted, "Stand" suffers a bit much from the late 80’s in the chorus and "All for the Glory" is horribly generic, but overall, Gene, Paul and their hired guns make a pretty decent Kiss cover band. Sure, even the best songs on Sonic Boom aren’t quite what they wrote 30 to 35 years ago and they don’t have the fire that once fueled their drive to the top, but other hard rock bands have done worse. Much worse. Still, the cover is a better rip-off of Rock and Roll Over than the music is.

The package comes with a second CD collecting 15 old tunes, mostly from their first decade. It isn’t clear what purpose it serves other than to point out the band’s current shortcomings. There’s also a DVD from a show earlier this year in Buenos Aires, but the performance finds them going through the motions of trying to be the Kiss of old when those days are long gone. They do shoot an impressive amount of confetti into the crowd though. It kinda makes one wonder what they’re trying to cover up.


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