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KISS Avatars: 5 Ways We’d Like to See the ‘New Era’ Utilized

By Erica Banas // Rock Music Reporter

KISS avatars were unveiled as the “new era” of the legendary band following their final show ever.

The video below was played after KISS left the stage at Madison Square Garden on Saturday (Dec. 2). In the clip, Paul Stanley is heard saying, “KISS Army! Your love, your power has made us immortal. The new KISS era starts now!”

Per KISS’ official website, “The KISS avatars were created by visual effects company Industrial Light & Magic using their advanced performance-capture technology, gathering every nuance of KISS band members’ face and body performance in exact detail.”

Industrial Light & Magic was founded by George Lucas in 1975. Since its founding, the visual effects company has over 500 film and TV credits. Among them are the many Star Wars properties and the various titles within the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Additionally, the “new era” of KISS is working with the Sweden-based Pophouse Entertainment Group. The company isn’t new to the music world. It’s responsible for ABBA Voyage, the acclaimed digital concert honoring the iconic pop group.

Per a press release from Pophouse Entertainment Group, “The band’s transformation into avatars will ensure their immortalization, while pushing the boundaries of rock and roll performances, as KISS have done throughout their career to date. This avatar performance will feature KISS as fantasy-based superheroes, and will provide a glimpse of just one of the many and varied ways in which KISS will live on as digital performers through their avatars in the future.”

Basically, the options are essentially limitless for the KISS avatars. With the “new era” of KISS being now, we can’t help but think — and be a little overwhelmed — by all of the ways KISS-tory can continue. Because we just can’t help ourselves, we came up with five ideas of how to utilize these avatars.

  • A Stint at the Las Vegas Sphere (Obviously!)

    Clearly, a concert experience will happen with the KISS avatars. Having them debut at the Las Vegas Sphere just makes sense. After all, the KISS World Museum is located in Vegas. Plus, the videos that have been released from U2’s residency at the Sphere are just mindblowing.

  • Personalized concerts

    In a promotional video from Pophouse that featured Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley, it was revealed that AI technology would be utilized with the KISS avatars that would allow the avatars to react to some stimuli. The example given was someone in the crowd at the digital concert yelling “I love you” would lead to the Stanley avatar to yell “I love you” back. So, why not give people the option to commission a personalized concert? Sure, that would have a hefty price tag, but clearly, anything is possible here.

  • A new KISS video game

    The technology used to create the KISS avatars is incredible. You know what wasn’t incredible? The 2000 video game KISS: Psycho Circus: The Nightmare Child. It was a first-person shooter based on Todd McFarlane’s KISS: Psycho Circus comic book series. As you can tell from the clip below, the video game hasn’t aged well, so a new one would be a great opportunity.

  • A KISS/Star Wars crossover

    Sure, this one seems like a long shot, but considering the George Lucus connection with Industrial Light & Magic, it wouldn’t be completely unheard of. It’s not like it would be worse than the 1978 Star Wars Holiday Special!

  • An epic remake of 'KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park'

    Okay, if the Star Wars crossover is a long shot, then a remake of KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park is probably unthinkable. However, the silliness of this idea was one we couldn’t resist. Paul Stanley said of the film in a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter, “I embrace it like an ugly child … We were sold the idea of the film in a sentence that was virtually, ‘A Hard Day’s Night meets Star Wars.’ Well, it was far from either.”

    Clearly, the time is now to right this wrong!

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