Alan Sculley at Press-Enterprise.com has filed the following report:

How KISS Got Its Groove Back

The 1998 Kiss studio CD, Psycho Circus, looked more like a last gasp than the celebrated event it was intended to be.

The CD was billed as the return of the original Kiss, since it came in the midst of the reunion of guitarist/singer Paul Stanley and bassist/singer Gene Simmons with the two other original members, guitarist Ace Frehley and drummer Peter Criss.

Psycho Circus, though, ended up being a lackluster effort on a musical level, and far less than advertised when it came to being called a triumphant return of the classic Kiss lineup.

So Kiss had something to prove when the band decided it wanted to make a new studio CD last year. For one thing, this was a new lineup for Kiss, with guitarist Tommy Thayer making his full-fledged debut and drummer Eric Singer, who since 1996 has been the band's drummer whenever Criss wasn't in the lineup, back on board.

Interestingly, the band decided that if Kiss was going to fail on this album -- the newly released Sonic Boom -- there would be no one to blame but the band members themselves, as Stanley took the reins on the project.

"I think the most important thing that I noticed about this record was it was really done, well done, there was no outside producer," Singer said, commenting in a recent phone interview about Stanley's role in the CD.

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