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List Price: $19.98 | | Label: Island / Mercury
Salesrank: 5727
Released: August 12, 1997 |
| Our Price: $12.96 |
| Used Price: $11.87 |
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| Media: Audio CD |
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Editorial Review:
2006 Japanese limited edition issue of the album classic in a deluxe, miniaturized LP sleeve replica of the original vinyl album artwork.
Alive II Reviews:
God gave Halloween to you 
2009-10-23 - I'm writing these words totally upset. Unhinged. My girlfriend just left me tonight. Well, she denies that ~ words words words ~ but when I saw her and that other guy, illuminated under 4th of July sparklers and an October moon, I knew. Stabbed and abandoned. Yet I felt it coming on, too, so I was ready. Suspicions validated. Righteous and wronged. Relieved, too. Done with being hurt. BECAUSE I'm hurt. Raw and OVER it. Such a vitality, this particular feeling alive. A uniquely teenage sensation, lonely and insolent. Pure rock and roll. This is why we need cabaret clowns like Paul Stanley to wear circus earrings and smash hard a raw guitar into smithereens. Only those of us utterly bereft and vulnerable in the world need such macho postures belched foolishly to 11. My fellow losers, we have been given a gift. Halloween is all about hiding the hurt. What if Halloween was forever? Like heaven. If you're downright down and out tonight, this way to the egress.
A worth owning sequel to one of rock's greatest live albums
2009-10-08 - KISS' eighth album Alive II was released in November of 1977 in time for the Christmas sale that year.
The album was recorded over three nights at the LA Forum in Los Angeles in August of 1977.
The songs that were live were pretty much most of the album (save "Hard Luck Woman" and "Tomorrow and Tonight" which were recorded in the studio with crowd noises and there were some edits on the live tracks and overdubs). They attempted those aforementioned songs live but didn't work during rehearsals. However, "Detroit Rock City", "King of the Night Time World" (the former are rumored from the KISS live shows in Japan from 1977), "Ladies Room", "Makin Love", "Love Gun", "Calling Dr Love", "Christine Sixteen", "Shock Me (with a slightly edited Ace Frehley guitar solo)", "I Stole Your Love", "Beth" (rumored to be from Japan 1977), "God of Thunder" (with edited Peter Criss drum solo), "I Want You" and "Shout it Out Loud" surpass their studio counterparts.
KISS felt that repeating songs from 1975's Alive! album would have been useless (though I do like later live versions from the 1977 tour of "Firehouse", "Black Diamond" and "Rock and Roll All Night") so the band decided to record five new tracks at a theater with a mobile truck without an audience. With Ace Frehley gone AWOL (he does play guitar and bass and sing on his composition, the killer rocker "Rocket Ride"), rhythm guitarist/singer Paul Stanley, bass player/singer Gene Simmons and drummer Peter Criss went and recorded four new tracks (with Bob Kulick doing lead guitar to mimic Ace's playing on the first of the three new tracks) which were Paul's rocker "All American Man" and two Gene rockers out of "Rockin in the USA" and "Larger Than Life". There's also a cover of Dave Clark Five's "Any Way You Want It" recorded as a five piece.
When the album was released, it went Double Platinum and hit #6 on the Billboard Top 200 and was the second Top 10 album for KISS in 1977, the year they were kings of American rock. I first got this cassette in June of 1988 when my older sister gave it to me. Then, eventually got on CD then bought the digitally remastered edition which comes with the book and tattoos that were on the original album and the sound is superb 30 years on!
Highly recommended!
Brings back memories
2009-09-11 - KISS was the band back in the days! This cd is a reminder of my days in H.S., love it.... Thank you.
KISS ALIVE AGAIN
2009-06-20 - always will be compared to KISS ALIVE, but ALIVE 2 stands on it's on as a great cd. like said in other reviews the single disk in the KISS ALIVE boxset sounds better
Alive II: Second time is NOT the charm! 
2008-09-03 - KISS' first live album, "Alive!" was a fluke...nobody expected it to perform as it did, and that album basically started KISS on thier meteoric rise in fame amd world-reknown. "Alive!" was really just a live set of thier first three studio albums, all that they had released up to that point in thier career. KISS tried to duplicate that formula for "Alive II", and released a set of live performances of thier following three studio albums: "Destroyer", "Rock and Roll Over", and "Love Gun".
Many things conspired to prevent this album from turning out as awesome as the first live album: This was the era when wireless guitars and amps were just becoming practical for concert use, and KISS was one of the early-adopters of the technology for obvious reasons. Unfortunately, this also imparted a rather trebly, tinny sound to the recording which dramatically reduced the bombast and thrust of the music. Compounding this was the venue where it was recorded: The LA Ampi-theatre, a large outdoor complex, which made the acoustics something less than favorable for a professional recording.
For the first live album, many of the studio songs were lengthened with longer intros, longer guitar solos, and in the case of a couple of tunes, an additional, second guitar solo. This enabled the meager amount of songs to nicelty fill up 4 album sides of the first release, a double album.
For "Alive II", the songs were played with no 'extras', so they were all realatively short. Even the 'long' drum solo in "God of Thunder" was miniscule as compared to the drum solo on "Alive!" Consequently, there was not enough material to fill up four sides of a double album by using tunes only from the last three studio releases. KISS even went so far as the record three songs 'live' that they did not actually play during that 3-night concert: "King of the Nightime World","Hard Luck Woman" and "Tomorrow and Tonight" were all recorded 'live' during the day-time soundcheck before that night's actual concert, and the crowd noise was edited into the tracks for the album.
The fourth 'studio' side was a harbinger of things to come. Not one of the studio songs on the album contained all the members of KISS playing on the same track. These were more like preliminary efforts made for thier up-coming individual solo albums.
Whereas the first live album, "Alive!", definitely improves on nearly every studio version of the songs they played, "Alive II" almost universally presented inferior versions of every song. The fact that KISS' production values made a vast improvement in studio recordings from thier first three studio albums to thier second set of three studio albums has a lot to do with that.
Nevertheless, "Alive II" is not the phnomenon that "Alive!" was (and still is!)
To make it clear, "Alive II' is a good album when compared to most other typical albums of the era (especially the average 'live' album), but "Alive II" has the unfortunate disadvantage of always being directly compared to "Alive!"...a comparison that very few albums could ever hope to end up favorably.
