KISS
Islington Academy, London
02/03/2010

The mighty KISS machine play tonight for a lucky 800 fans before their stadium tour in May. How in hell will they fit all that fire and ego onto such a small stage? The anticipation to find out exactly how is tangible even outside the venue – KISS devotees have come from all over the world just to be here tonight, which is no mean feat given that the gig was announced a couple of days ago. That’s KISS fans for you…

A few beers later and everyone is crammed into the front few rows. The venue is small, and they have built the stage forward to fit in the cannons. Then they actually turn up and sashay onto the stage – no, it’s not a tribute band, it really is Gene, Paul, Eric and Tommy blasting into ‘Modern Day Delilah’ from ‘Sonic Boom’. The set is rather short, at just over an hour, but they manage to disco it through the classics ‘Detroit Rock City’, ‘Rock And Roll All Night’, and the old but brilliant ‘Black Diamond’ and ‘100,000 Years’.

Yes, Paul Stanley’s voice might be a tad croaky, but the man has been doing this for 36 years, and he’s still wearing lycra tight pants, high heels and showing us his bare chest. And when the whole audience sing louder than he does, the state of his lungs doesn’t really matter. Some sounds may be drowned out in the mighty boom of the confetti cannons – bits of paper are still showing up in strange places on The Fly’s clothes and in more intimate parts of the audience’s garments no doubt – but it’s good to see that KISS can still get into girls’ pants one way or another.

Karen Toftera