The Real Reason KISS Will Likely Never Release New Music Again

There's always a bit of trepidation for some fans when their favorite performer releases a new album. Will they be producing something that is of the great quality that earned them their fans? Or do they veer off in a completely different direction, possibly alienating fans? 

Musicians usually feel the same sense of worry — but they release new music because they feel moved to write, record, and share their art. Fans often have lots of opinions about whether performers went in the right direction with new music, but art is about risk. 

This is a particularly tricky road to navigate for long-running bands. Do they stay in the same lane and possibly feel creatively stifled or do they just trust their instincts and play new songs? Some older bands are coming out of what seems like a decades-long slumber. The band Yes released a new album in 2021, which Ultimate Guitar said sounded like they were "merely following a well-worn path," and that it dipped "into the nostalgia pool."

Still, some bands are content to tour and play songs from their past hits without any new releases. It may not be that the members of the band are in a creative rut. Often long-time fans are more interested in hearing older, well-loved songs than anything new. The members of KISS use this reasoning to explain why they don't make another album. 

Per Blabbermouth, Paul Stanley said during a KISS Kruise interview that KISS fans would not "embrace new music." Part of it is because those older songs invoke memories for those fans and they want to revel in those earlier times.

As far as putting together setlists, it's not as if KISS was a one-hit-wonder band — they've released 20 studio albums, per Classic Rock History, and they can pull a lot of material from those. Also, Stanley, Gene Simmons, Ace Frehley, and Peter Criss are all in their late 60s and early-to-mid 70s, via Biography, and they have been playing farewell tours. So it makes sense that they are very reluctant to put in time in the studio to record a new album.

If they do decide to finally retire, then the four musicians known as Demon, Starchild, Spaceman, and Catman can rest knowing that they will forever be in the annals of rock history. They don't need new music to cement that legacy.