Customer Reviews

Asylum

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

This is one of the best Kiss albums from 80's.And it's not true that is a weak album.
You'll find here a great heavy metal songs like "I'm alive";"Love's a deadly weapon".
You will also find here song witch have a spirit from the 70's like "Uh!all night" or "Any way you slice it".
There is A big hit "Tears are falling".In this track Paul Stanley play on bass!
I'm a very big Kiss Maniac so,for me it's very hard to choose one great cd.But I can reccomend this record for any fan of great hard rock music!
What more can I say? Great Album!

Asylum would begin Kiss's creative musical decline. Although this album would be a big seller, the great heavy metal tracks featured on their previous albums Creatures Of The Night, Lick It Up, and Animalize are nowhere to be found. Despite the strong performances from both guitarist Bruce Kulick and drummer Eric Carr, most of the tracks here are unmemorable and the best tracks aren't among their best work.

There are a few good songs here, with Paul Stanley contributing the best tracks here, the ballads "Tears Are Falling" and "Who Wants to Be Lonely?" The thunderous opening track "King Of The Mountain" is also pretty good. This may be Gene Simmons' weakest collection of songs on a Kiss album, with "Any Way You Slice It" being the only standout. The rest of the tracks here are weak by Kiss standards. "I'm Alive" and "Love's A Deadly Weapon" are very heavy songs, but despite featuring some lightning fast solos from Kulick, don't stand out. Worst yet, the tracks "Radar For Love", "Trial By Fire", "Secretly Cruel", and "Uh! All Night" are all filler, probably their worst batch of songs since Unmasked. Eric Carr's drumming is great throughout, particularly on the heavier tracks, but even his impressive performance can't save this album. It is a tad better than their next album Crazy Nights, but it still remains one of their weakest albums.

This is awesome! Who wants to be lonely is a great song,I wonder why it isn't on any of their greatest hits albums!this is a must buy for any kiss fan!

I have always liked Asylum better than Animalize. Yet, I am biased. Asylum was the "new" Kiss album when I first started listening to Kiss, so it was getting a lot of airplay and it was the latest thing. Today though I prefer it because it just has better songs, plain and simple.

On the good side, you get Paul's songs:
King Of The Mountain (awesome)
Tears Are Falling (awesome)
Who Wants To Be Lonely (great)
Radar For Love (good)
Uh! All Night (decent)

Gene's good songs include:
Trial By Fire (good)
Secretly Cruel (great)

That only leave 3 duds by my counting: Gene's Love's A Deadly Weapon and Any Way You Slice It, and Paul's I'm Alive. I'm Alive is almost a carbon copy of other fast Paul songs such as Gimme More.

Cover art is bland but it does have links to Kiss' past such as the colouring. Production is a little glossy on the drums, but there are no keyboards or anything like what would happen later on Crazy Nights. It's a little more pop than Animalize, but I think it's just a better album period. Just better songs. Bruce Kulick gets kudos for lots of songwriting credits on his very first Kiss album.

Enjoy. 3 stars.

Asylum sees KISS going in a more commercial direction, a more friendly Glam/Hair Metal sound that was popular at the time (1985). Asylum goes the commercial route but still retains a certain edge that its follow up, 1987's Crazy Nights would not have. This one is not full of keyboards or overproduced, it has the sound of what was popular at the time (KISS tended to follow trends, especially during the 80's) but it's still a rock album. This album is popular among fans for having a horrible album cover and many agree that it is in fact THE worst album cover out of all the KISS covers. Something about the pastel colors, the faces...it just doesn't work.

As would be the story of the Mid-80's and onward to the early 90's for KISS, Paul Stanley was the one carrying the band here on Asylum. His songs were the singles, and his were also the better ones. Gene Simmons. Bruce Kulick on guitar is a welcome addition, the guitarist making his studio debut with KISS on Asylum. His playing is melodic, precise and he plays with a certain passion that his predecessor Mark St-John did not have (Nothing against Mark, he was a talented guitarist in his own right). Kulick would be an important part of KISS for years to come and today he's one of the only non-original members who has respect from the fans known as the KISS army.

"King of the Mountain" begins with some thunderous drumming from Erick Carr. The song obviously works very well for the 1980's and is an excellent rocking album opener. "Any Way You Slice It" is a hard rocking song and it has Gene doing screaming vocals, good track. "Who Wants To Be Lonely" was another famous cut from Asylum, the chorus is very memorable and it's a very catchy song that fit right in the mid-80's. "Trial By Fire" a decent Gene song, he came up with much worse during the 80's this is a good song. Paul sounds like he's already been there on "I'm Alive", like we've heard thing song before only slightly differently (think of "Gimme More" from Lick It Up its very similar). "Tears Are Falling" was a hit for KISS and to this day I think it's one of the best things the band has ever done, it's got a solid build-up riff, terrific pre-chorus and hits the listener with an undeniably catchy chorus. To me it remains the best song off Asylum. "Uh! All Night" is a good rocker, the song is only slightly subtle and some will say its immature and judging by the video that accompanies it probably is. One must remember that this was the 1980's, it's not a bad song but you may not want to get caught listening to it! I left out some of the songs but I think you get an idea.

I like Asylum for the album that it is but it's not one of the better KISS albums although it has its place in a KISS fan's collection. It's a good 80's KISS album but it's not amazing by any mean. Asylum is for fans of KISS or the 80's Glam/Hair scene, besides that chances are this album won't be for you. It's a respectable effort for which I'll give Asylum 3 stars out of 5. On a side note, if you have time I recommend you watch the three videos released for Asylum (Tears Are Falling, Who Wants to be Lonely and Uh! All Night), they're worth checking out just to see the overly flashy and flamboyant clothes Paul Stanley was wearing. Plus they're really a time capsule of this era in rock music, they're really fun videos I'll tell you that!

Kiss have at least since the 1980's been very sensitive to musical trends. After their excellent period of hard rock, Simmons and Stanley put their fingers up in the air to see where the winds were blowing... After two pop sounding albums ("Dynasty" and "Unmasked") the two leaders decided (against the will of Ace Frehley) to record a theme album: "The elder", which didn't work out. Kiss went back to hard rock but had lost something from their heydays. A couple of more or less decent albums followed but it became more and more clear that especially Simmons either lost his ability to write good tunes or simply didn't care anymore.

"Asylum" from 1985 gives us a band that jumped the "hair metal" train. For the first time in music history heavy metal/hard rock wasn't mainly for the boys, and a lot of band got more polished, ballad oriented and image became even more important due to MTV. A lot of new bands (Bon Jovi, Cinderella, Icon etc) popped up and gained success. Obviously Kiss wanted to be a part of the whole circus.

But what about the music? Well, this album include at least one good song: "King of the mountain", and a couple of average standard like "Any way you slice it" and "Uh! all night". Then we got "Tears are falling" and "Who wants to be lonely", two songs that by the times standard and musical climate was quite good, and were in fact smaller hits. With hindsight they didn't stand the test of time but they can be interesting as a document of the music back in 1985. Sad to say, the album also include some songs that are indeed not good like the awful "Love's a deadly weapon".

This is not Kiss best or worst effort, and actually deserves 2 1/2 stars.

Overall this is a good CD, but it's really tough, 17 years later, to listen to songs like "radar for love" and "love's a deadly weapon" without cringing a little. Some of the lyrics on this CD are just downright embarassing(much like the Hot In The Shade CD). Paul Stanley does a great job singing on this cd and Gene is, well, Gene... mean, dirty and singing about chicks like he always does on most of his songs. A good 80's cd... better than the previous cd "Animalize"

ASYLUM featured KISS' most stable lineup since 1979, when the band had all 4 original members. Bruce Kulick's guitar shows off some great riffs, and Eric Carr's drumming is top notch. Simmon's worked less on this album then Stanely, since he was busy with acting in Hollywood, but his "Any Way You Slice It" is a catchy tune, as is "Trial By Fire," my favorite track on the album. Paul Stanley's "King of The Mountain kicks the album off good, and his vocals soar. "Who Wants To Be Lonely" is a clunky number, but not bad. The wild "I'm Alive keeps things fast-paced in the middle of the album, before you get to "Tears Are Falling, " a mid-paced ballad that has a really flashy video to boot. The closing track, "Uh! All Night," is terrible, but hilarious! The video is even funnier! This album has some filler, but overall is worth the buy for an 80's metal fan.

First of all, I thank God that Detroit Rock City is NOT on this cd. It's a great song, but, when you see it on CD after CD, it gets a little old. On this one, KISS again shows they are Masters of Music. It's new material for the time, and it's all ROCK AND ROLL!!! As for Bruce Kulick and Eric Carr's work, SPECTACULAR comes to mind. Probably the most memorable song on the entire album is the Provocative "Uh All Night". The sound is of course Metal, and the lyrics are risque to say the least(and if you can find the video, it will steam your glasses as well). Another thing I like about this CD is getting to hear more of the raw sound of Gene Simmons voice on songs like Any Way You Slice It, Trial By Fire, and Secretly Cruel. Tears Are Falling is the most popular song of the CD, and has Paul doing some of his most beautiful yet hard rocking vocal work to the date. MMMM, the thought of Paul Stanley and Heart's Ann Wilson doing a duo.....Cool!!! Now, if you're looking for tear jerking, blue, slow music, you wont find it here. There are no BETH like songs on this CD, just solid Rock and Roll from beginning to end.

'Lick It Up,' 'Animalize' and 'Asylum' are three pretty similar KISS records. Released at the boom of 80's pop metal, all three are over-produced, nuts and bolts KISS records whose songs could easily be passed amongst one another without much notice. And different people react differently to each record.

I'm an 'Asylum' fan. Like the other two records, this album is absolutely carried by Paul Stanley's work. Gene Simmons was in Hollywood at the time, making records as a hobby and it shows. His contributions are not only minimal, but detrimental.

'Asylum' was the first KISS record to feature Bruce Kulick on guitar and he sounds good, bringing a degree of guitar respectability to the band without being as lick-happy as many of his 80's peers.

Standout tunes 'Tears Are Falling' and 'Who Wants To Be Lonely?' absolutely carry this record. But they stand far taller than the hits off the precious two records. A hot number like 'I'm Alive' and a tough 'King of the Mountain' back them up. 'Uh! All Night' features an embarrassment of a lyric but musically it's a great song, slinky and over the top, much like the era it was representing.

This was a glitzy, showy KISS record. Heavy but polished. I like it far more than either 'Lick It Up' or 'Animalize.' With their line-up stable, KISS had reaffirmed itself as true kings of the rock and roll mountain.