Gene Simmons Announces First Solo Show After Kiss Retirement

Rock and roll icons Kiss may have officially entered their retirement years (although holograms will keep the legacy living on), but The Gene Simmons Band is still at it.

Specifically, they are playing the Summer Breeze festival in Sao Paulo, Brazil on April 26, their first performance since 2018. The band is also made up of guitarists Brent Woods (Sebastian Bach, Vince Neil) and Zach Throne (Corey Taylor), as well as drummer Brian Tichy (Whitesnake, Billy Idol, Foreigner).

While legally, this won’t be a Kiss show, the band play a lot of Kiss covers, so for those not taken by the whole hologram idea, this could be the next best thing if you missed their final performance or didn’t get to see them live before they called it quits.

Simmons is stoked on the holograms, however, as he claims they are going to keep getting better and better.

“They’re gonna get better, that animated stuff,” he says. “There’s so much being planned, even beyond my comprehension. But they’re spending, oh, about 200 million [dollars] to take it to the next level.”

We also know that ex-Kiss guitarist Ace Frehley isn’t a fan of the avatars. He said in a recent interview:

“I’m happy it’s over, because I’m not gonna be compared to them anymore… But I don’t get this avatar thing that they’re gonna do. I mean, I saw some of it on a video on YouTube last night. It kind of looked like it was geared towards children. And it’s not rock and roll. I get up on stage without backing tracks, plug my amp into it, plug my guitar into a Marshall and go. That’s it. It’s always been that way and always will be.”

Regardless where you land on the hologram debate, if you really want to, you can still catch Gene Simmons live and in the flesh.