This album and subsequent tour were supposed to be the "Return of KISS", which was confusing on a number of fronts. Didn't they just blitz the public with like, a ton of solo records and a feature film, the very year before? So, what exactly were these buffoons returning from? It was as if they were subconsciously acknowledging the previous year's ventures were grandiose failures.
Then again, it went deeper than that. Criss was a broken-down mess by now, both physically and mentally. The band chose to bring in the producer from his solo album - Vini Poncia - who took one look at Criss and decided he wasn't fit to play drums on this record. The band called in the drummer who played on Ace's solo record, Anton Fig, to ghost-play on every track - except for one, the appropriately-named "Dirty Livin".
Dynasty, in general, doesn't sound like a typical KISS record, or at least not one up to this point. Then again, we heard traces of this drift in Love Gun as well. Furthermore, despite the illusion of togetherness as displayed on the album cover - which was a hoax in itself - it all sounds like the product of a very fractured band, as if they simply merged four distinct personalities in one record, never bothering to cross paths with one particular track.
In one sense, it makes for an interesting record because it appears to jump from one weird place to another, with the added rider that it does away with the usual KISS reference points and dares to go in directions that the older records never bothered to go in. But in another sense, it feels very artificial - they are only doing this because it's trendy, or they are bored, or just pissed off with each other. As B.B. King sang once upon a time, the thrill is gone…and I mean, long gone.
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