The battle really heats up for match up number three, as two KISS heavyweights step into the ring!
BJ: Creatures of the Night vs. Lick It Up is a close call. In my opinion they are both good albums, not great, with a few stand-out tracks. The obvious choice for best song of the bunch is the title track from Creatures of the Night. I’d rank “Danger” as my second favorite song on Creatures. My two favorite songs on Lick It Up are “Exciter” and “A Million To One.” That’s a clean sweep for Paul Stanley. These are Kiss’ two most metal albums and I had to resort to ranking the songs again, 1-10, 1 being shit and 10 being amazing. It was difficult but here’s how it played out:
Creatures of the Night 10
Saint and Sinner 7
Keep Me Comin’ 7
Rock and Roll Hell 5
Danger 8
I Love It Loud 6
I Still Love You 3
Killer 3
War Machine 8
Lick It Up
Exciter 9
Not For The Innocent 6
Lick It Up 8
Young and Wasted 7
Gimme More 4
All Hell’s Breakin’ Loose 2
A Million To One 9
Fits Like A Glove 7
Dance All Over Your Face 4
And On The 8th Day 5
57/9=6.3
That’s a total of 61 for Lick It Up.
61/10=6.1
It’s a close one but Creatures wins 6.3 to 6.1.
AAron: This tourney isn’t getting any easier, and this is only the first round! Luck of the draw brings back to back albums from ’82 and ’83. Creatures and Lick It Up are two of my favorite KISS albums. They equally display the heavy, hard rock sound that I love about the band. When Gene and Paul commit to not following trends and just being KISS they are the best band in the world. Eric Carr and Vinnie Vincent put in the greatest performances of their careers on both of these albums. To me, these are like sister albums and are equally fantastic. I’ll give the slight edge to Creatures of the Night, based on Vinnie’s stupid purple shirt on the cover of Lick It Up. Winner: Creatures of the Night
Chris: This is truly a Sophie’s (not Gene’s daughter) choice for me. I absolutely adore both of these albums. For the longest time, I did what Paul Stanley has accused many of the record buying public of doing; listening with my eyes as Creatures got more of my attention due to being a “makeup” era album. Cut me some slack, I was 13! Here we go:
Wally: Ouch, this sucks as I have to eliminate one of my favorite albums. The last album to feature the makeup vs the first without it. As B.J. mentioned these both of these albums are “Heavy Metal KISS” and both of them are mainstays on my ipod.
My first instinct was to jump on Creatures as I totally love the obscure stuff on that album “Killer”, “Danger”, “Rock n Roll Hell” and the title track is flawless. The album cover with the glowing eyes is my favorite cover of all KISS albums and I have always referred to Creatures as a metal masterpiece.
Then I had to re look at Lick It Up. Maybe it’s a timing thing for me as Lick it Up dropped as my friends and I had just “discovered” metal and were clamoring for everything we could get our hands on. The video for Lick it Up was in heavy rotation and this album quickly joined our collection. We devoured it, every note, every song and to us there were no weak links on this album. “Fits Like a Glove”, “Dance All Over Your Face”, “A Million to One”, “Young and Wasted” and the evil “Not For the Innocent” it was heavy metal bliss and more over the top tha
n Creatures. I am sure taking off the make up had something to do with this and I would have to say the inclusion of Vinnie Vincent (stupid purple shirt and all LOL) in the songwriting and the six string shredding, really turned this album up a notch. Surprising to even myself I choose “Lick It UP”. Winner: Lick It Up
Round 1, Game 3 – Goes into extra innings but Lick It Up wins 3 -2!