New KISS Album to Rock, Out of WalMart?

Paul Stanley reports from the band's Web that the new KISS album "rocks big time," and should be out in Sept/Oct.

Stanley said:

We’re about four days from finishing the new Kiss album. Eleven tracks, and it is everything I’ve told you. It is classic. It is all written within the band. And it rocks big time!

Tommy [Thayer, guitar] and Eric (Singer, drums] both handle lead vocals. The songs, sound and playing will knock your socks off. You will all be as proud and excited as we all are. Oh…and WAIT till you see the cover!

Regarding that cover, Michael Doret, who designed the 1977 cover for Rock and Roll Over, has been tapped to do the new one, according to this recent interview:

You said you drew your inspiration (for the KISS cover) from a job for a (Japanese) magazine cover, IDEA. Where did you get your inspiration for that cover?

The magazine was doing a feature on my work and they asked me to come up with a cover for that issue. I did the cover image to look like a shooting gallery. So the inspiration probably goes all the way back to Coney Island—but the direct inspiration was also vintage tin toys and tin litho target games. Anyway I did the IDEA cover first and the whole KISS / Rock and Roll Over thing came afterward. I loved the way the IDEA cover came out, the way I had them print it in Pantone colors—it almost felt like a silkscreen. I really wanted to go that route again. As the members of KISS were wearing Kabuki-style makeup, the Japanese-y approach I did on the IDEA cover seemed a perfect match. So I came up with that graphic and used a similar color scheme and look. We even did it in five flat colors—not in 4 color process.

(The KISS cover) was like a shooting gallery then?

Not at all. It turned out to be more like a mandala, more Asian-influenced. I was just going for the look I had come up with on that other cover. The visual theme I chose came out of the album’s name, the “Rollover” thing. There was no “right side up” to that cover…An interesting side-note is that after all these years since I did that work for KISS, they’ve come back to me and asked me to design their next CD cover. It’s a big project, and at the moment, I’m totally immersed in it.

And photographer Ross Halfin, who has worked with KISS in the past, posted to his diary recently:

"Fathers Day today - spent it at the pool. The Love Gun Paul Stanley was at the hotel for lunch with his family. Jimmy and I chatted with him and his son Evan. Paul showed me the new Kiss album cover on his iphone and I'm still not saying what it's called, but it's old school Kiss..."

Other reports indicate that the band's new album will follow The Eagles, AC/DC and others by being available exclusively at WalMart.

According to Rolling Stone:

However, when Kiss do release their new album, it will apparently be a Walmart exclusive. Simmons revealed the news to an unlikely source — actress Denise Richards — during a Sirius XM visit. The promotional blitz will include Walmart dedicating an area of their stores to the band and dubbing it “Kiss Korner,” Simmons told Richards in the video posted at Blabbermouth. Rumors of a deal along the lines of AC/DC’s massively successful exclusive with the retail giant first emerged after Simmons and Stanley attended an Arkansas Walmart shareholders meeting on June 5th.