Episode 203: Kiss God of thunder year 1976. English Version.
00:00:00 - Classics Rocks All Time
00:00:05 - I can hear ya!
00:00:07 - Hello friends from all over the world.
00:00:10 - Always faithful to classic rocks all time.
00:00:14 - Listen to us in English and Spanish.
00:00:17 - Find us on the internet, on Google and you go directly to the PodNation page with all the chapters of the songs and their stories.
00:00:27 - Today the God of Thunder is present in this podcast.
00:00:38 - Finding classic rocks all-time the most incredible stories and anecdotes.
00:00:44 - Musicians Bruce Dickinson.
00:00:46 - Want to see us.
00:00:48 - And more people want to see us.
00:00:50 - And you know, I mean, first of all we love, you know, we love doing it.
00:00:54 - It's really a kind of a privilege to be, you know, 51 years old and being able to go out just still to have a vo-
00:01:09 - Lemmy
00:01:10 - Well, it's spelled differently than everything, it's called orgasmatron
00:01:13 - Subscribe on the Spotify
00:01:24 - Destroyer in Spanish, Destructor, is the fourth studio album by the band Kiss, released on March 15, 1976.
00:01:32 - It was the second consecutive Kiss album to reach the top 20 in the United States, as well as securing the number one spot in Germany and New Zealand.
00:01:43 - Destroyer was Kiss's sway generous moment, a magical explosion of hellish imagination.
00:01:52 - The planets aligned and the creative juices didn't flow so much like a waterfall, like a fountain of blood gushing out of Gene Simmons's Crimson Hole.
00:02:01 - God of Thunder belongs to this exceptional album.
00:02:05 - Bob Ezrin the producer of the album took the reins of the group.
00:02:11 - Paul Stanley later admitted that this producer's character was exactly what Kiss needed.
00:02:17 - Bob made sure to let us know who was boss, Stanley wrote in his memoir.
00:02:22 - He wore a whistle around his neck and referred to us as campers.
00:02:26 - He told us we didn't know anything, which was true.
00:02:34 - God of Thunder was known as the Gene Simmons song, it was actually written by his bandmate,
00:02:39 - Paul Stanley, who had written it as a more accelerated song.
00:02:43 - Bob Ezrin, who produced the destroyer album, Listen to It, Loved It and, much to Paul
00:02:48 - Paul Stanley's annoyance understood that Jean Simon was the one to sing it.
00:02:52 - Esrin stressed that each member had to have a theme that would provide more depth to their respective character because for him Paul is the romantic.
00:03:00 - So he is the one who sings Do You Love Me?
00:03:04 - And Jean is the monster of the gang.
00:03:07 - So he has to sing God of Thunder.
00:03:12 - The record is much slower, laborious and threatening.
00:03:16 - The strange noises in the background are producer Bob Ezrin's sons David and Josh, whom he recorded making eerie noises through a cheap walkie-talkie.
00:03:25 - I told Josh to be a monster, David was making wolf cries, gnashing his teeth and howling.
00:03:30 - I thought that was amazing.
00:03:32 - He put a bunch of reverb on it and the quartet was happy he put it on the track.
00:03:37 - Regarding the drums, the producer decided to place it in an elevator at dawn so that it would be empty and asked Peter Criss to do a big role to take advantage of the reverb.
00:03:49 - Over the years, this became a signature song for Gene Simmons.
00:03:54 - Usually he would perform it and then spit blood, always a crowd favorite.
00:03:58 - Ace Frelly was the lead guitarist for Kiss at the time.
00:04:02 - In a Song Facts interview, he cited his solo on God of Thunder as one of his best.
00:04:08 - One used to call it a dinosaur curves when he would bend the strings really hard.
00:04:12 - The string goes down, he said.
00:04:17 - The song is very dark, heavy, showing the band that they had to play in the major leagues of metal.
00:04:28 - The song's lyrics talk about Thor being one of the most well-known Norse gods.
00:04:33 - He was the strongest of the gods, he protected youth, lightning, fire, and architecture.
00:04:39 - He was the son of the god Odin and Jord.
00:04:42 - He married the goddess Sif, with whom he had three children, Magni, Modi, and Trud and is always depicted with a hammer in his hand, his weapon.
00:04:50 - Peter Criss, the cat, in an interview with Eddie Trunk remembers the recording of the album.
00:04:55 - God bless you all.
00:04:56 - Thank you so much.
00:04:57 - Peter have you heard the the remix that Bob Bezren did of Destroyer? Or have you heard about it? Why?
00:05:07 - I look I know about it. Okay, and my opinion was
00:05:13 - Why touch a masterpiece right because it was I worked and I say in my book I
00:05:20 - Worked never so hard in my life to get through an album he says that in a liner notes on there
00:05:26 - And I, and because of the drug addiction of Coke, I thought like an idiot trying to keep up with Ezra, which was an impossibility by doing more, maybe I'd be better on the drums.
00:05:40 - The worst I, the worst, more I did the worst I got, but I got through it.
00:05:44 - I did that album, I, that's me on it.
00:05:47 - I played all that stuff.
00:05:48 - Oh, he says that.
00:05:49 - He says he's often asked over the decades if this is really the guys and he said,
00:05:55 - It absolutely is, except for the orchestras and all that obviously, it goes, it absolutely is and it absolutely is the product of the incredible hard work that they went through to do it.
00:06:06 - Yes, and I should say Bob put me through hell, but I was a better drummer from it, it gave me a breakdown, but I did it out of that myself because I was killing myself thinking if all this other stuff would work.
00:06:21 - But I think personally it's done, it was done, it's finished, you got a guy like Ezrin who did it at that time, everything at the time was perfect for it.
00:06:35 - To me to go in and touch something like that is either to make more money from the fans or think that you could outdo Ezrin, although I heard he was somewhat involved in it.
00:06:48 - Well he did do it.
00:06:49 - He did.
00:06:50 - He wasn't just involved. It was his thing. Okay, but yeah, I still don't see the reasoning in it
00:06:55 - I just why I think the original was the original and I think it's like going back with Led Zeppelin stuff and remixing them all
00:07:02 - Well, which they're about to do by the way, I guess that must be the new thing then well
00:07:06 - It's a way well, there's two things about it. It's a way to spiky catalog in some ways
00:07:11 - But it's also when you have these iconic records 30 40 years on I
00:07:16 - I don't ever have a problem with them doing it as long as the original version is always available and stays in print.
00:07:26 - I have a huge problem when it replaces the other version, you can't get that anymore.
00:07:32 - And that's not the case with this, this is just kind of an experiment.
00:07:36 - This is Ezrin revisiting this record 30 some odd years after it was made and just saying, you know what, let's try to, they didn't re-record anything, let's just listen for some things I may have mixed out, let's just give it a different take.
00:07:51 - It doesn't sound all that much different, but the one thing that everybody says that has really changed for even bigger are your drums.
00:08:02 - Now, have you heard any of it?
00:08:05 - Do you wanna hear any of it?
00:08:06 - Do you wanna hear a song?
00:08:07 - I'd be curious to get your take on it.
00:08:09 - Yeah, I'd like, sure.
00:08:10 - Give me a song.
00:08:12 - God I know that they said the acoustic guitar some fan told me they raised it in death. Yeah
00:08:20 - There's more some more acoustic in there. We can play that at some point it or
00:08:23 - Let's play it. Let's play a rock
00:08:25 - I'd like to get your take on Beth because obviously that's we know mine here and like a God of Thunder or what else?
00:08:31 - Yeah, God of Thunder is good
00:08:33 - Because there's some heavy drums big-time drums. Yeah, so I know I did have the drums in that
00:08:39 - I played them in an elevator, I think.
00:08:41 - Now, there's a lot of people have heard this and said it's not all that much different.
00:08:46 - But if you listen, and maybe if you listen your headphones or whatever, you're gonna hear things.
00:08:50 - I'd be curious to get your take on what you're hearing because he said that as he went through these tapes, he found some things that had been mixed out that he wanted to bring back in, and it was more just to try it, you know what I'm saying?
00:09:06 - It's gonna make me sound cool, I'm happy.
00:09:08 - Because I worked hard and if they if ashen pulled that out that that sweat
00:09:15 - But sweat and tears out of out of it
00:09:18 - Didn't I have nothing?
00:09:21 - Yeah, let's give it a whirl
00:09:38 - You've found something about you, you've found something about me,
00:10:04 - Don't run from Kaili
00:10:08 - If thou were to take me
00:10:13 - I was born out of helpless
00:10:18 - To my father's soul
00:10:23 - I was raised by the demons
00:10:28 - And to reign as one born out of hunger
00:10:33 - A kind of thunder, and rock and roll
00:10:42 - A spell you're under, a slowly wrapping wild girl
00:10:48 - A version of soul
00:10:52 - I'm the Lord of the Waste Lands, a modern German of sea
00:11:10 - I gather darkness to please me
00:11:15 - And I command you to kneel before the God of thunder
00:11:24 - And rock the road you hold
00:11:30 - The spell you under
00:11:33 - Will slowly rob you of your virgin soul
00:12:15 - I am the Lord of the Waste Lands
00:12:23 - In modern day, I am a seal
00:12:28 - I gather darkness to ease me
00:12:33 - And I command you to kneel before God
00:12:38 - Call us under, and rock it all you hold!
00:12:48 - The Spell you're under, will still drop you off your virgin soul!
00:13:08 - You can't beat me, you can't beat me, you can't beat me, you can't beat me, you can't beat me, you can't beat me, you can't beat me, you can't beat me, you can't beat me, you can't beat me, you can't beat me, you can't beat me, you can't beat me, you can't beat me, you can't beat me, you can't beat me, you can't beat me, you can't beat me, you can't beat me, you can't beat me, you can't beat me, you can't beat me, you can't beat me, you can't beat me, you can't beat me, you can't beat me, you can't beat me, you can't beat me, you can't beat me, you can't beat me, you can't beat me, you can't beat me, you can't beat me, you can't beat me, you can't beat me, you can't beat me, you can't beat me, you