The Kerner/Wise production team set the tone, as far as the basic KISS sound went, but now it was time to elevate the standard. Enter Bob Ezrin. There was mutual interest from both sides, but as Bob did with Alice Cooper (and as it turned out), KISS was even more in need of the bedrock professionalism and discipline it took to put together a real classic studio record. Here's the deal with Destroyer - it literally destroys any past notions you may have about this band, and believe me, they could not have done it without Ezrin involved. This is somewhat similar to the trashy pop-rock which Alice Cooper was playing around the same time, but devoid of the scary psychological content, and therefore, just a whole ton of fun to rock out to - with the added rider of the band assuming a dumbed-down, meta hard-rock, all-things-to-everyone role - but in quite the condensed time and space. Because, back in the mid-70's, there was not 10,579 subgenres in music like there is now. This is the length of a goddamn EP, and you can argue they were short on tunes here, because they had to tack on some backwards-tracked sound collage at the end to fill up space. Oh well. And oh yeah, the critics? Hated it. Not even the fans really liked it at first, until "Beth" - which was originally the B-side of "Detroit Rock City" - somehow lucked onto the radio and captured the hearts of radio listeners across America, becoming the group's biggest chart hit. In my opinion, they should have kept Ezrin on retainer as producer much like Alice Cooper did for the majority of his 70's albums, but it was not to be. By the time the band worked with Bob again, they were at a low point, so was Bob, and it resulted in an album you might have heard of called Music from "The Elder", which absolutely bombed.