Track Listing

1. Atomic Bombs
2. Love at First Sight
3. Heartache
4. Poison
5. Itch
6. Kix Are for Kids
7. Contrary Mary
8. Kid
9. Yeah, Yeah, Yeah

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #13423 in Music
• Released on: 1990-10-25
• Number of discs: 1

Customer Reviews

KIX are for Everyone.
This has got to be one of the most overlooked hard rock debuts ever. With every single song [being] totally [awesome], and the live shows to back it up, "Kix" should have spread way beyond the band's rabid North Eastern following. Heck, I even opened for them acouple of times during the tours for the first two albums, in the little town of Sunbury at the Strand Theater as a stand up comic! But trust me, the crowds that came to see these boys weren't there for my punch lines. They were there to hear it loud, fast, and rock solid.

The debut Kix record delivered that in spades. From the opening siren wail of "Atomic Bombs" to the closing, hilarious rant about the date from hell, "Yeah Yeah Yeah," there isn't a clunker in the batch. "Heartache" even sounded like a bonafide rocking single in the Cheap Trick vien. There were touches of AC/DC, Aerosmith, and Zep to be picked out of the mix as well. Obvious credit must be given to producer Thom Allom (who helmed some of the classic Judas Priest albums) for giving this album both its bombast and its bite. You just still have to hand it to Kix, though. They tore up the East Coast like few hard rockers before them. Makes you wonder if they'd gone to LA, if they'd have been bigger.

No matter. The band and their killer "KIX" is still here for you, and not just for kids.

Early pop metal with a twist
Kix was one of the pop metal bands that unfortunately slipped under the radar of the record buying public, even those who remember them often just remember the song "Don't Close Your Eyes" from the 1988 album "Blow My Fuse." The earlier Kix records were different beasts altogether - though the AC/DC influence was still an obvious touchstone, the early records (especially this debut) were a bit more unique and new-wave influenced.

Kix hailed from Hagerstown, MD, a blue collar town that's close to both western PA as well as West Virginia. I'm always amazed that a hair metal band that was this quirky and odd didn't get booed off the stage in that area, it seems more like a meat-and-potatoes hard rock town, but I honestly wasn't around there in the late 70's/early 80s when Kix came through the ranks (originally as the Shooze), so I don't know for sure...

Anyhow, as I grew up in Maryland, I always had a little bit of knowledge as to who Kix were, and I thought the snippet of the song "Cold Chills" in the Wayne's World movie was pretty cool. This was the 2nd Kix record I ever bought, and frankly I was a little underwhelmed at first. This record is a hell of a grower, though, with a lot of unique songwriting, hilarious lyrics, and a good mix of clean/dirty hard rock. It's definately different, but it was one of the very first hair metal records and picked up on some of the best traits of the genre - basically bands with cool riffs and a good sense of humor like AC/DC, Cheap Trick, and Van Halen thrown in a blender, but without an INSTANT classic tune like any of those bands.

If you live near the Baltimore area and get the 97.9 FM station (98 ROCK), you may have even heard "The Itch" before, a song that I know was in regular rotation up until at least 5 years ago - 20 years of deserved spins that should have influenced more people to go pick up this record. Further praise?? Chuck Eddy called this the #5 metal album of all time, and everyone in the know says how copycats Poison basically rode Kix's exact stage show to massive success.

If you don't love it on first listen, give it time. It's definately at the smarter end of the pop metal genre, and worthy of repeated listens. Check it out!

Best Tracks:
"Atomic Bombs" - Just a good, straight-up hard rocker that sounds considerably more sinister than anything that follows.
"Heartache" - Ever heard the original In Color version of Cheap Trick's "I Want You To Want Me"? Here's a goofball (but catchy) song that's a worthy sequel.
"The Itch" - Some of the most unique songwriting in the pop metal genre ever. Just when you think it's going to explode, it drops back down into a truly unclassifiable chorus. Great tune.
"Yeah Yeah Yeah" - A great story song about trying to hook up with a girl, and when she can't hang with the partying she pukes all over his floor. No, this isn't Bob Dylan here, but I'll take this type of story song over some of his snoozefests anyday.

Join the Kix Fan Club!
In the mid to late 80's, you couldn't pick up a Hit Parader or Circus magazine without seeing an ad prompting you to join the Kix fan club. I always used to ask my friends if they had heard the band. No one had. So about a year and a half after I saw the ad for the first time, and seeing the record in a small German record store for DM 8 (around $2), I picked it up.

This is not really metal, more or less rock in the same vein as say, the first three Cheap Trick albums. Some songs are really bouncy ("The Itch" has this cool groove and then has this kinda goofy chorus, but it really couldn't work any other way). The lyrics are pretty great. Mostly it's songs about women, more or less in a story-telling style. "Yeah Yeah Yeah" has a break in the middle where he tells a story about being with a girl who throws up on him - twice.

But overall, I recommend you join the Kix fan club TODAY! Or at least get this classic 80's rock album.