Word on the street has it that the new 11 track KISS album, produced by Paul and scheduled for October 6, will be titled Sonic Boom. Song titles include Russian Roulette, Stand, Rotten To The Core and Modern Day Delilah. According to Gene, it’s the best KISS album since Destroyer, which saw the light of day back in 1976. Looks like the band has an exclusive deal with U.S. retailer Wal-mart to make the album available to the fans, so no record label is needed. Something which acts such as Bruce Springsteen, AC/DC and the Eagles also did with their latest releases (which wasn’t much of a success for all of them, with especially Springsteen regretting his move).

Guitar Player Magazine heard part of the album and commented as follows: “Heard 5 songs. If you dig KISS, you’re gonna dig this new album. Paul sings his ass off. Eric plays some amazingly powerful drums. Gene was finally made to play all of his bass parts (apparently, in the past, if someone had a cool bass idea, he let them play it), and he does have a pretty driving sound. Finally, Paul and Tommy’s guitars sound huge – with some fab riffs and ’70s-style solos.”

“KISS album preview, part II — No surprise, but the five songs I heard had huge, anthemic choruses. The band played the basics live in the studio — the first time they’ve done that in a long, long time — and, as a result, you get the fire and bombast of the early KISS Alive albums with the sonic dimension of tracks recorded in a studio setting. Sorry, I didn’t jot down song titles.”

This time the band didn’t use any outside writers, there’s no ballads, and all four members get to do lead vocals on at least one song, so that includes Tommy and Eric. Also in October, limited edition KISS M&M’s will be available, for which the ad campaign has already started in U.S. publications.