News

KISS’ third album – the edge of their commercial breakthrough – is getting done up to the nines for its 50th anniversary.

The rock legends will reissue Dressed to Kill as a super deluxe set, available exclusively through the band’s official store on five CDs or eight LPs and a Blu-ray. The 1975 release, featuring “C’mon and Love Me” and, arguably the group’s signature song “Rock and Roll All Nite,” has been newly remastered by Bernie Grundman and, on the Blu-ray, remixed from the original multitracks in Dolby Atmos and 5.1 surround by engineer David Frangoni. (The Blu-ray also includes remastered versions of promo videos for “Rock and Roll All Nite” and “C’mon and Love Me,” restored from original 16 millimeter film elements.) Bonus audio material includes 23 unreleased demos and outtakes, including the unissued songs “Mistake” and “Burning Up with Fever,” and the debut release of two concerts recorded in 1975 and utilized for the group’s breakthrough Alive! Here, they’ve newly mixed by Alive! engineer Eddie Kramer – and, crucially, stripped of any studio overdubs utilized on that “concert” LP. A host of reproduced archival paper goods, patches, buttons and other ephemera will be included in the set, as well.

Though the New York quartet had a taste for the theatrical, Dressed to Kill was about as down and dirty as KISS could get. Hastily recorded over 10 days at Electric Lady Studios (with Casablanca Records founder Neil Bogart serving as de facto producer alongside the band themselves), the album clocks in as the group’s shortest – just a hair over 30 minutes, with long silences between the grooves of each song – but features early favorites like “She,” the rave-up “Ladies in Waiting,” “C’mon and Love Me” and “Rock and Roll All Nite,” which arguably made every subsequent KISS set list complete.

Indeed, after the modest commercial performance of Dressed to Kill (with its campy cover image of the quartet in full makeup and business suits mostly proffered by manager Bill Aucoin, as only drummer Peter Criss owned a suit), Casablanca realized that KISS were best presented on an album that captured part of their explosive live act. Four shows were committed to tape (including the two featured here, at Detroit’s Cobo Arena on May 17, 1975 and Davenport, Iowa’s RKO Orpheum on July 20 of the same year), and – with some studio sweetening that the band copped to much later – the double album Alive!, released nearly six months after Dressed to Kill, would enter the Top 10 in America and certify KISS as one of the blockbuster live bands. (Initial reports indicated that Kramer’s mixes of the two shows in this box would be part of a 50th anniversary edition of Alive!)

Recent years have seen KISS at a kareer krossroads: the band, still featuring founding singer Paul Stanley and bassist Gene Simmons, played their final show at the end of 2023, and sold their intellectual property and merchandise rights to Swedish company Pophouse, who will create a “digital avatar” show for the group similar to the one they created for ABBA. Meanwhile, last week’s Dressed to Kill announcement came just days before the passing of one of its founding members, guitarist Ace Frehley.

The Dressed to Kill box is sold exclusively at the band’s official web store, with a t-shirt thrown in for good measure. It starts shipping this Friday, October 24, and will also be digitally available the same day. Order links and the full track list are below.

Dressed to Kill (50th Anniversary Super Deluxe Edition) (UMe, 2025)

5CD/Blu-ray: KISS Store
8LP/Blu-ray: KISS Store

* previously unreleased

CD/LP 1: Original album remastered by Bernie Grundman (originally released as Casablanca NBLP 7016, 1975)

1. Room Service
2. Two Timer
3. Ladies in Waiting
4. Getaway
5. Rock Bottom
6. C’mon and Love Me
7. Anything for My Baby
8. She
9. Love Her All I Can
10. Rock and Roll All Nite

CD 2/LP 2-3: Demos, Alternate Mixes and Instrumental Outtakes *

1. Mistake (Studio Demo)
2. Rock and Roll All Nite (Studio Demo)
3. Anything for My Baby (Studio Demo)
4. Burning Up with Fever (Studio Demo)
5. Rock and Roll All Nite (Studio Demo – Party Version)
6. Rock and Roll All Nite (Studio Demo – Alternate Vocal Take)
7. Room Service (Extended Outtake)
8. Two Timer (Alternate Mix)
9. Ladies in Waiting (Alternate Ending)
10. C’mon and Love Me (Alternate Mix)
11. Anything for My Baby (Alternate Mix)
12. Love Her All I Can (Alternate Mix)
13. Two Timer (Extended Alternate Mix)
14. Anything for My Baby (Extended Alternate Mix)
15. Rock and Roll All Nite (Super-Fast Outtake)
16. Room Service (Instrumental Outtake)
17. Two Timer (Instrumental Outtake)
18. Getaway (Instrumental Outtake)
19. Rock Bottom (Instrumental Outtake)
20. Anything for My Baby (Instrumental Extended Outtake)
21. She (Instrumental Extended Outtake)
22. Love Her All I Can (Instrumental Outtake)
23. Rock and Roll All Nite (Instrumental Outtake)

CD 3-4/LP 4-6: Live at Cobo Arena, Detroit, MI – 5/16/1975 *

1. Rock Bottom
2. Strutter
3. Nothin’ to Lose
4. Two Timer
5. Let Me Know
6. Got to Choose
7. She
8. Ace Frehley Guitar Solo
9. Parasite
10. Cold Gin

1. 100,000 Years
2. Peter Criss Drum Solo/100,000 Years
3. Let Me Go, Rock N’ Roll
4. C’mon and Love Me
5. Firehouse
6. Deuce
7. Rock and Roll All Nite
8. Black Diamond

CD 5/LP 7-8: Live at RKO Orpheum Theatre, Davenport, IA – 7/20/1975 (first show) *

1. Deuce
2. Strutter
3. Got to Choose
4. Hotter Than Hell
5. Firehouse
6. She
7. Ace Frehley Guitar Solo
8. Nothin’ to Lose
9. C’mon and Love Me
10. 100,000 Years
11. Peter Criss Drum Solo/100,000 Years
12. Black Diamond
13. Cold Gin
14. Rock and Roll All Nite

Blu-ray

• Original album (Dolby Atmos Mix by David Frangoni) *
• Original album (Dolby True HD 5.1 Surround Mix by David Frangoni) *
• Original album (192kHz 24-bit & 96kHz 24-bit PCM Stereo remaster by Bernie Grundman)
• Rock and Roll All Nite (promo video)
• C’mon and Love Me (promo video)