This album and subsequent tour were supposed to be the "Return of KISS", which was confusing on a number of fronts. Didn't they just blitz the public with like, a ton of solo records and a feature film, the very year before? So, what exactly were these buffoons returning from? It was as if they were subconsciously acknowledging the previous year's ventures were grandiose failures. Then again, it went deeper than that. Criss was a broken-down mess by now, both physically and mentally. The band chose to bring in the producer from his solo album - Vini Poncia - who took one look at Criss and decided he wasn't fit to play drums on this record. The band called in the drummer who played on Ace's solo record, Anton Fig, to ghost-play on every track - except for one, the appropriately-named "Dirty Livin". Dynasty, in general, doesn't sound like a typical KISS record, or at least not one up to this point. Then again, we heard traces of this drift in Love Gun as well. Furthermore, despite the illusion of togetherness as displayed on the album cover - which was a hoax in itself - it all sounds like the product of a very fractured band, as if they simply merged four distinct personalities in one record, never bothering to cross paths with one particular track. In one sense, it makes for an interesting record because it appears to jump from one weird place to another, with the added rider that it does away with the usual KISS reference points and dares to go in directions that the older records never bothered to go in. But in another sense, it feels very artificial - they are only doing this because it's trendy, or they are bored, or just pissed off with each other. As B.B. King sang once upon a time, the thrill is gone…and I mean, long gone.

Whereas Ace used his solo record to drown and/or toot away his sorrows, and Gene treated his as an excuse to laze about and chase tail, Paul's is just plain boring. We are supposed to take him at face value as the serious, love-focused, slightly mysterious musician from Kiss, which means all of these songs are as predictably gag-me-with-a-spoon bone-headed as a high school football team's playbook from the 1930's to Bill Belichick. As with Gene's record, a whole gaggle of guest stars here, but to mention them would be a disservice.

This is one confusing record - technically, a greatest hits compilation, but not really - because approximately half of these tracks have been remixed and/or altered in some way, shape, or form.

While the nation was being swept away in growing hysteria over KISS, they reconvened to record what they hoped would be a successful follow-up to Destroyer, tabbing Eddie Kramer to produce it, then making a curious choice to record the album in an empty theatre in a small New York town, in order to replicate the live feel from Alive. The other thing about RARO is that there are still some moderate residuals from the Destroyer experience, yet, there is a sense that we are back to the old way of doing things, too. Like it or not, Ezrin held these guys to a high standard. On here, there are many high-quality tunes, but ultimately, the inmates are back running the asylum and they can only run it well for so long. Or not for very long, as it would soon turn out.

The Kerner/Wise production team set the tone, as far as the basic KISS sound went, but now it was time to elevate the standard. Enter Bob Ezrin. There was mutual interest from both sides, but as Bob did with Alice Cooper (and as it turned out), KISS was even more in need of the bedrock professionalism and discipline it took to put together a real classic studio record. Here's the deal with Destroyer - it literally destroys any past notions you may have about this band, and believe me, they could not have done it without Ezrin involved. This is somewhat similar to the trashy pop-rock which Alice Cooper was playing around the same time, but devoid of the scary psychological content, and therefore, just a whole ton of fun to rock out to - with the added rider of the band assuming a dumbed-down, meta hard-rock, all-things-to-everyone role - but in quite the condensed time and space. Because, back in the mid-70's, there was not 10,579 subgenres in music like there is now. This is the length of a goddamn EP, and you can argue they were short on tunes here, because they had to tack on some backwards-tracked sound collage at the end to fill up space. Oh well. And oh yeah, the critics? Hated it. Not even the fans really liked it at first, until "Beth" - which was originally the B-side of "Detroit Rock City" - somehow lucked onto the radio and captured the hearts of radio listeners across America, becoming the group's biggest chart hit. In my opinion, they should have kept Ezrin on retainer as producer much like Alice Cooper did for the majority of his 70's albums, but it was not to be. By the time the band worked with Bob again, they were at a low point, so was Bob, and it resulted in an album you might have heard of called Music from "The Elder", which absolutely bombed.