12 '70s Hard Rock Albums All Fans Should Own

Bizarrely, it took four albums for Kiss to truly embrace grandiosity. The ideas were there, the ambition, the facepaint, but the sound itself took a little time to catch up. On Destroyer, Kiss took the heavy songwriting from the first three records, added a good layer of Hollywood gloss and glamour, and never looked back.

Any album that opens with "Detroit Rock City" is off to a good start, and Kiss maintain that anthemic, us against the world pace throughout. Never a group to work harder than they were getting paid to do, Destroyer only hangs around for 35 minutes, and that lean approach is beneficial.

It means that pretty much every song is as packed full of daft content as it possibly can be. Tracks like “Great Expectations” and “God Of Thunder” take on proportions more epic than the band had yet considered, and the production work by Bob Ezrin (a hard taskmaster per the band) brings it all together.

The bells and whistles are all there - a kids’ choir, surprisingly, features heavily - but it would be nothing without the tunes. Here they’re at their most undeniable, proving Kiss to be far more than a novelty act.