KISS will be releasing a 50th anniversary edition of their breakthrough album, Alive!
Eddie Kramer, who produced, engineered and mixed the 1975 album, says he recently spent 46 days mixing the tapes for this new collection.
Kramer also mixed the album in Dolby Atmos.
Universal has yet to announce a release date, but it is expected to be out in time for KISSmas.
Last year, in an interview with Guitar World, Kramer said capturing KISS live had its challenges.
"It was hard because they were always jumping around, and we had to do a bunch of work on the album after the fact (overdubbing), but that's how it was. The band may deny it, but the fact remains that on Alive!, we had to fix a bunch of stuff...
"So, while it's not totally 'live,' it's a great creation of the live sound of KISS from that time. There were just bits we had to fix for obvious reasons, like the guys being on stage in six-inch boots, bombs going off and rockets and flames shooting to God knows where. It takes a lot of work to keep in time and tune while jumping up and down. They can do it now, but in those days, not so much."
And last month, during an appearance on the Broken Record podcast, Paul Stanley said, "Alive! really captured the essence of the live experience. Now, that couldn't have happened without us going in the studio and enhancing it and surrounding you with people… Live albums were boring for four hours. You didn't even know they were live until the end of the song where you heard some clapping. But for KISS, we wanted an album that immersed you in the experience, which means being surrounded by people, which means bombs going off that are deafening, which means fixing any mistakes or a broken string. Snobs or purists may have looked down their nose at that idea, but the truth is that album is still considered, if not the greatest, one of the greatest live album ever. Not because everything was live, but because it captured the live experience."
Alive! contains performances from four shows in the spring and summer of 1975:
- May 16th - Cobo Arena in Detroit
- June 21st - Cleveland Music Hall in Cleveland
- July 20th - RKO Orpheum Theater in Davenport, Iowa
- July 23rd - Wildwoods Convention Center in Wildwood, New Jersey
Despite selling over nine-million copies worldwide, the Recording Industry Association of America has only certified it for 500,000 copies sold in the U.S. It has not been re-certified since December 4th, 1975, three months after its release on September 10th. SoundScan figures from 2007 add another 258,000 in U.S. sales between 1991 and 2006, making it the band's fourth best selling pre-1991 album.