BJ: I’ve Had Enough (Into The Fire) is really great, one of my favorite Kiss songs from the eighties, and I like Heaven’s On Fire but after those first two songs Animalize takes a nose dive., I’m not a big fan of any other song on the record, Paul’s other songs are generic and uninspired. Burn Bitch Burn and Murder In High Heels are horrible and Gene’s other songs are at least listenable, but lackluster. Gene didn’t put a whole lot of effort into his contributions and it shows. Destroyer is my least favorite Kiss album of the seventies. Obviously Detroit Rock City is magnificent and I adore King of the Night Time World, but God of Thunder is hard to take seriously, Great Expectations is garbage, and Flaming Youth is great but Sweet Pain is not. Shout It Out Loud has a wonderful verse and bridge but I wish the chorus was more melodic. Beth is ridiculous and I do not like Do You Love Me. In other words, at least half of Destroyer leaves me cold, but a few songs blow me away. The overblown production was completely unnecessary. Ezrin did not take Kiss to some other level, he laid it on too thick for no good reason. Just let them be a rock band man! I vote Destroyer, but the album’s lucky it was up against Animalize and not Asylum! Winner: Destroyer
Rich: Animalize is again not one of my favourites, being one of the last to join its’ brethren on my wall of cassette tapes but it does contain a couple of good tracks. Heaven’s On Fire, Under The Gun and I’ve Had Enough (Into The Fire) are the best the album has to offer and Burn Bitch Burn has always been comical to me. Destroyer was one of the early ones to join my collection, containing another highlight for me in Do You Love Me which on my cassette version led off the album, some sort of misprint indicated otherwise. I know that Destroyer is considered an iconic Kiss record and recently got the remastering that it deserves, but I can certainly do without Great Expectations as it’s not particularly a winning endorsement. Simply on the strength of Do You Love Me, Detroit Rock Cityand God Of Thunder Destroyer, as it’s title suggests destroys the flaccidity of Animalize.
Animalize was another one of those “vote from the heart” albums. Pure heavy metal KISS! It came out when I was 14, was the first concert tour I got to see and Thrills In The Night was the first song I learned to play on the bass guitar. So for personal reasons Animalize is very close to my heart as a KISS fan. That said Destroyer also takes me back to my grade 8 trip to Ottawa as it was on this “educational” trip that I purchased my first copy of Destroyer. The bus ride and hotel room stay was spent blasting destroyer and air guitaring
for hours. I choose DESTROYER. Winner: Destroyer
Round 1 Game 8 – A landslide victory for Destroyer. Score 5 – 0