it can not just leave ...

am not a kiss fan and it never was. but I remember it well: KISS ALIVE! and Alive II were simply in the record collections of those far-off 1970s.
there was not then this tightened borders betw. rock and pop music. This made rock - and because there was disco. and there was no heavy metal! kiss was hard rock, done. as well as Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, Doro, scorpions, sweet and all the many other heroes of these early harder variety of rock music.

and kiss shocked the people - especially here in piefigen Germany of that time: not necessarily because of their music, but because of their affigen carnival costumes (Gene Simmons had higher platform shoes as the girls from Abba and it was always a mystery how a shoe on such and bass play, sing and deliver an hour-long show was without popping in your face). Ace Frehley shot with his guitar fireworks over the audience and overall had this band pretty twisted.

this country, however, had a major handicap kiss - that was the runes spelling the band's name, which reminded 30 years after the war, many people in the Nazi henchmen - and was banned this notation here in Germany therefore also. hard music, the look bloodthirsty and the SS runes ensured in the West German music industry then here for a rather moderate success in those days - but that should change.

and then this aspect of consistent masking - no one ever got an unmasked picture of the band members to face! there was no Internet, no Google, Wikipedia, YouTube, Flickr, Facebook - it was for young people solely the "Bravo" magazine and Frank run bergs "popshop" on the radio to find out - and so were the true faces of four people kiss-forever a mystery. that made the band of course extremely interesting.

Today I know one thing: all the great old Hard Rock and Heavy Metal like. Iron Maiden, Saxon, Metallica, Judas Priest, which emerged in the late 70s, about 80 were large and are icons even today, KISS were among their idols.

I recently bought the two on their way great albums "Dynasty" and the follower "unmasked" after 30 years again and am totally amazed at the refreshing music again: watching the kiss rather untypical songs like "Sure Know Something" , "Shandi", and "Easy As It Seems" I liked even then most and today that's just cool - especially the vocals of Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons are just great!

NeXT year marks the existence of kiss for 40th time - and still 40 years kiss to their music heard so fresh like back then. I hope that Gene and Paul manage to this fantastic anniversary again its founding members Ace and Peter to win, so "The Star Child", "The Demon", "the spaceman", and "the cat" again can party together ,

Conclusion:
kiss are no musical flyer and were the never. but: kiss are a cult - and they have earned their place in the hall of fame of rock and roll. their mask they wear today probably for different reasons than in the past - you just think about how old Gene and Paul today are ... they seem in any case still have fun with music. and that's a good thing.