I feel so good, I'm so alive

Kiss - Destroyer - 1975

I really got into Kiss when I was about 14 years old or so, which is probably the ideal age to get into Kiss. I had known them for a couple of years, since the Dynasty days, which was a huge hit, and I remember buying that one too. But after that, I pretty much ignored them until a few years later, not too sure why, I got interested in them again.
And the first album I bought at that time was this one. Maybe it was because "Beth", the beautiful ballad sung by Peter Criss. Maybe it was because at the time, I think, the quite absurd movie Kiss meets the Phantom of the Park was released in cinemas in Buenos Aires, and I remember loving that song. As for the movie, it's so bad that apparently you couldn't even mention it to them. It's so bad that it's good.
Regardless of how, this was quite a revelation to me. Much less commercial than Dynasty would be, but a lot of fun to listen to, and with a lot of very well known hits, this one became one of my favourite Kiss albums ever.
It's also the most "experimental" they had done so far. I think it was a good move, after the huge success of their live album. I mean, they couldn't possibly compete with that and, instead, they focused on production values, and added effects, choirs, and even musicians from the New York Philharmonic.
Still, it doesn't lose an inch of fun, energy or cheekiness, and that's certainly a great thing.

• The album was produced by Bob Ezrin (who had produced Alice Cooper and would later on work with Pink Floyd). He pretty much handled the sessions as a "boot camp" according to the band members themselves. They actually appreciated what they learned from the experience. 
• The opening track, "Detroit, Rock City" tells the story of a guy driving on the road, who dies in a crash agains a truck. It was inspired by Paul Stanley hearing about someone getting hit and killed on their way to a concert. 
• And it's "Detroit..." that I'm sharing here tonight. It was a tie between it and "Beth", but this album deserves to have a rocker posted. 

Trying to save my soul tonight

Led Zeppelin - Presence - 1975

You can tell there's something fundamentally wrong when I put a Kiss album higher than a Led Zeppelin one.
For the most part, I always try to put them in order of preference, in case you haven't noticed. And, sometimes, if I think an album doesn't deserve to come in "second", I might just skip it till the following day (that's actually what I have just done. I also listened to Thin Lizzy's Jailbreak today, but I liked it too much to put it second). 

Is this album horrible? Probably not. But it's quite bland and lame, and nowhere near any of their previous works. I'm definitely not a fan of Houses of the Holy, and I thought that one also was a bit bland, but this one is much more boring. At least in that one they were trying to experiment. This one is just a very tired Physical Graffiti. 

Jimmy Page apparently likes this album a lot. It's probably because his work is excellent here. But it doesn't make up for the fact that Robert Plant's vocals sound so drained, or for the songs going nowhere for most of the time. Now, I know Plant had been in a terrible car accident recently, and had to record the vocals from a wheelchair. I know it wasn't his fault, although I wonder what pressing need they had, at that point in their careers, to record an album just a couple of months after the accident. 

• The opening track, "Achilles Last Stand", is not bad at all. It has very good guitars and drums but it's a bit too long. 
• There's a 1950s style rock song called "Candy Store Rock". The title is stupid, the song is nothing to write home about, except for the fact that it says a lot of "Oh baby baby". Damn you, Britney!!
• The album closes with a blues called "Tea for One", which reminds me a bit of "Since I've been Loving you", only that everything they do that there, they do wrong here. Again, Robert's voice was so flat that probably had a lot to do with it. 
• There's one truly awesome song here, which is "Nobody's fault but mine". I've always loved it, and this is what I'm sharing here.