THE BEAST

As the 50th anniversary of one of rock's most iconic live albums approaches, KISS fans are in for a monumental treat. Legendary producer Eddie Kramer has confirmed that a special expanded edition of the band’s 1975 breakthrough live album Alive! is on the way — and it's coming in late 2025 under the title KISS Alive! 50 .

Kramer, who produced the original album, revealed the project during an appearance on The Jay Jay French Connection: Beyond The Music , the podcast hosted by TWISTED SISTER guitarist Jay Jay French. The new collection will include full mixes of all the original concert recordings that contributed to Alive! , as well as rare rehearsals and outtakes never before heard by the public.

“It’s a project I spent 46 days mixing,” said Kramer. “They found all the bloody tapes — thank God. Jeff Fura at Universal — big shoutout to him — he came up with the tapes; he found them. So we spent all this time restoring them, transferring them, and then I mixed every single show that actually contributed to the final one, plus all the rehearsals that Gene [Simmons] and Paul [Stanley] said, ‘We’ve gotta record in the afternoon.’”

Originally mixed at Electric Lady Studios in 1975, Alive! was the album that transformed KISS from a cult phenomenon into arena-filling superstars. Though the record is often credited with capturing the band’s raw and thunderous live energy, Kramer and the band have long admitted to studio enhancements in post-production.

“The band may deny it, but the fact remains that on Alive! , we had to fix a bunch of stuff,” Kramer told Guitar World last year. “They were always jumping around, and we had to do a bunch of work on the album after the fact. But that’s how it was… bombs going off, rockets, six-inch platform boots — it wasn’t easy to stay in tune or on time.”

Despite the polishing, both Kramer and Stanley maintain that the enhancements were necessary to deliver the full live experience to fans — an approach that arguably set a new standard for what a live album could be.

“'KISS Alive!' really captured the essence of the live experience,” Stanley explained on the Broken Record podcast. “That couldn't have happened without us going into the studio and enhancing it. Live albums were boring… we wanted an album that immersed you — bombs going off, people screaming, that total KISS experience.”

The KISS Alive! 50 package will reportedly include Dolby Atmos mixes and new audio restorations of the raw shows that comprised the original album, promising a more immersive and complete snapshot of KISS’s early live dominance.

The reissue follows the end of KISS’s touring career. The band played their final shows in December 2023 at New York City’s Madison Square Garden, closing out their epic End of the Road farewell tour, which began in 2019 and was delayed by the pandemic.

In the wake of their live retirement, KISS has already begun pivoting to the future through a groundbreaking partnership with Sweden’s Pophouse Entertainment — the company behind ABBA Voyage . The deal includes the sale of KISS’s entire music catalog, image rights, and brand name. Plans are underway for a biopic, a KISS avatar show, and an immersive KISS-themed experience.

With KISS Alive! 50 on the horizon, the band continues to embrace its legacy while expanding into new and innovative realms of entertainment. As the Spaceman once said: "You wanted the best, you got the best!" — and 50 years later, it looks like KISS fans are still getting it.