The album is the only live Kiss album released during the group's non-makeup era, excluding "Kiss Unplugged", released later in 1996. During the recording of "Alive II", Kiss did not want to duplicate songs from "Alive!", although some songs from "Alive III" are duplicate songs from their previous live albums. For example, "Rock and Roll All Nite" was performed on "Alive!" and again on "Alive III", but was not featured on "Alive II". It is also the first Kiss live album to feature a different lineup to the previous two, which featured the original lineup.