Kiss

O2 Arena, London, May 31, 2017

The crazy, crazy genius of Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley: it’s all about the smoke and mirrors…

- Michael Hann

NOTHING, perhaps, sums up Kiss quite so baldly as the moment Paul Stanley ends the silence he has demanded in memory of the victims of the Manchester Arena bombing. In a rare break from ruffing his hair with both hands, as he does at every available moment – between songs, during songs, whenever the opportunity arises, as if the Hedron hasn’t really done for the nits – he addresses his public: “How many girls here like to get licked?”

Whether the world is a better or a worse place for that question now seeming rather eyebrow-raising depends on whether or not you think the world would have been a healthier place had it been preserved in aspic a quarter of a century before this millennium began, and whether you are a fully paid-up member of the Kiss Army. naturally, tonight’s crowd is full of the latter, and – one rather suspects – plenty of people who long for the days when men wore make-up and women wore suspenders and mini-shorts, several of whom are visible on the Jubilee Line on the way to the show.