Kiss: Love Gun [BACK TO BLACK/CASABLANCA/MERCURY]

Why you'll love it

This 180g pressing from Quality Record Pressings recreates the original package, with a printed inner sleeve and cut-out sheets to build your own love gun. Love Gun shipped a million copies on day one, went platinum and became Kiss's first top 5 album on the Billboard 200.

This edition

• 180g vinyl
• Printed inner sleeve
• Cut-out love gun sheets, as on the original
• Pressed at Quality Record Pressings
• Lyrics included
• Stereo mix

About the album

In 1977 a Gallup poll named Kiss the most popular band in America, ahead of Aerosmith, Led Zeppelin and the Eagles, and Love Gun is the sound of a band right at the top. Produced with Eddie Kramer, recorded at the Record Plant and mixed at Electric Lady in New York, it's the classic lineup doing what it did best. Three nights at the LA Forum that August became the live album Alive II.

Paul Stanley said "I Stole Your Love" came quickly, and it opens the album in a blaze. Ace Frehley takes his first lead vocal on "Shock Me," written after he was knocked backwards by an ungrounded stair railing during a 1976 show. Gene Simmons stomps through "Christine Sixteen," later sampled by Tone Loc on Funky Cold Medina, "Tomorrow and Tonight" was written to recapture the spirit of Rock and Roll All Nite, and the title track struts, with Peter Criss swinging hard behind the kit.

With Frehley at the mic, it was the first Kiss studio album to feature lead vocals from all four members. The assembly instructions are, mercifully, simpler than most flat-pack furniture.

Also at Kops: more Kiss on vinyl · browse Rock

Tracklist

Listen

On Casablanca / Mercury / UMe (cat# B0020247-01), a reissue of the 1977 album.