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Klassik '78: so unique that there is no name for it.

By: Richard V.

How often does it happen that something's going on in the world of music that actually has not done before yet? Not that much I assure you. I mean, everything and everyone gets labeled these days, but that is quite impossible in this case. You see, Klassik '78 is a band that truly has done something no one ever did before.

Klassik ’78 consists of four guys that are all big Kiss fans. They think, like most Kiss fans, that the six studio albums the band made between 1974 and 1977 (‘Kiss’, ‘Hotter Than Hell’, ‘Dressed To Kill’, ‘Destroyer’, ‘Rock And Roll Over’ and ‘Love Gun’) and the live records (‘Alive’, ‘Alive II’) are the best music the band ever made. In 1978 Kiss did not record a new studio album. Instead, all four band members made a solo album that was released on the same day.

Suppose the four Kiss musicians did not make solo albums in 1978, but recorded a new studio album together. How would that sound? With that hypothesis, the men set to work and wrote a total of twelve songs that sound like ... Kiss. The bass, guitar solos, drums and even the vocals sound like vintage Kiss. Listen to a few songs below that have been put on YouTube. It sounds like long lost recordings have been discovered and are finally being released. The reactions are very positive. It is as if Gene Simmons, Paul Stanley, Ace Frehley and Peter Criss stepped into a DeLorean in 1978 and travelled forty years into the future. "The best Kiss record since ‘Love Gun’" is what many people are saying. Kiss fans around the world are enthusiastic and can’t believe their ears. Thanks to internet and social media, the music of Klassik '78 also ended up with Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley. The remaining original band members of Kiss are just as baffled as the fans and full of praise for the performance of Klassik '78.

Klassik '78 makes new music in the spirit of old Kiss. Klassik '78 does not fall into the category cover bands because they don’t play covers. They are not a tribute band either because they do not play music from a band that has stopped or has become less active. In our humble opinion Klassik '78 is a band that does something that has never been done before. The only band that did something similar was Gruesome who recorded an album that sounded like Chuck Schuldiner’s Death. However, they did not adopt the ‘what if’ concept like Klassik ’78.

In the music world there is no label for this new type of homage. Of course we do not limit ourselves to what has been done and look beyond the realms of music. In physics, there is such a thing as a parallel universe, a point in the fourth dimension on which two (or more) realities develop in parallel. The history of Kiss from 1978 onwards is well known, the music of Klassik '78 offers a realistic alternative. May we therefore call Klassik ‘78 the world's first parallel band?


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