The music's irredeemable, but boy what a mostra - KISS, O2 Arena review 

Last night, at the O2 Arena, a near capacity crowd of around 18,000 surrendered to the joys of a big, sloppy KISS. And it certainly was big: an all-guns-blazing, over-the-top, panto-rock extravaganza. But by golly was it sloppy.

KISS are a band who have gone a long way on very little talent. They are average players, terrible singers and banal songwriters. But they don’t just know how to put on a show – they practically invented the concept.

The veteran American glam-metal band can lay claim to having pioneered the modern arena show back in the mid-Seventies, introducing a new kind of theatrically spectacular production that has gone on to become the staple of live popular music entertainment. Every moment of Wednesday night’s set was packed with eye-catching gimmickry: hydraulic stages, pyrotechnics, lasers, fireworks, smoke, confetti and streamers, all deployed with comedic élan in front of vast video screens, while the band spun overhead on flying harnesses and zip wires, shooting rockets from guitars and blowing flames from their mouths. To be fair, it is the kind of the thing that contemporary audiences expect from even a mild-mannered boy band these days, but it makes most sense in this heavy-rock context (albeit with a dash of Grand Guignol).

There’s a strong element of pantomime to KISS’s live shows, emphasised by their trademark face make-up and fantasy costumes, with bassist-vocalist Gene Simmons as a Kabuki monster villain and vocalist-guitarist Paul Stanley as the Dame. Simmons dripped blood from his mouth, stomped slowly around the stage in cumbersome platform boots and bat cape, and occasionally licked his bass with demonic relish (which is, to be honest, about the most interesting thing he did with his instrument all night). Simmons has been sticking his famously long tongue out on cue for more than 40 years now and never seems to tire of it. Clearly, he knows where his talent lies.

Stanley camped it up at the centre of the stage, preening over a Union Jack guitar, and making extravagant pronouncements about the events of the evening. With black-and-white face paint, subtle lisp, unreconstructed New York accent and florid annunciation, he might have modelled himself on Sylvester the cartoon cat. He proved such a charismatic frontman, no one seemed to mind that his voice was shot to hell, the high notes ragged, the mid-range a wobbly growl.  

Barely aged: Gene Simmons in concert in 1996

Perhaps there is no reason for Kiss audiences to acknowledge such glaring deficiencies. Because, beneath the make-up, Kiss were never a very interesting rock band in the first place. Their Seventies hits have not stood the test of time, or become part of the pop cannon (indeed, their only universally recognised song, God Gave Rock and Roll To You, was a cover version of a 1973 hit by British band Argent, which Kiss no longer even play live, instead using it as an exit tape). Along with Alice Cooper, KISS effectively created an American response to glam rock, taking elements of bubblegum pop, melding it to hard rock and delivering it all with a sensational degree of showbusiness panache.

If KISS really have no redeeming musical qualities whatsoever – you can see better bands any night of the week in bars up and down the nation – they’ve always had a genius for marketing. KISS have always been a brand masquerading as a band, and, from the arena full of fans of all ages in KISS logo T-shirts and leather jackets, it appears that brand still has considerable appeal.

Their emotionless, meaningless, comical circus has improbably rolled on across five decades, offering an empty spectacle with no musical merit or substance. But hey, rock and roll.

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