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ACE FREHLEY
10,000 Volts

MNRK Heavy (2024)
Rating: 5/10

Ace Frehley is back with another bite – his eighth full-length studio solo album – although as expected it’s not a vicious one. Instead, the former Kiss rocker, amidst cases of swipes at his old band mates, turns in a rather tepid performance that will still no doubt excite the Kiss collectors and obsessives.

Shame on Ace for letting his fiancée Lara Cove provide the title for the dreadful ‘Constantly Cute’, and secondly, Frehley just isn’t a vocalist anymore. Even so, I’ll pick out the handful of positives from the album, most of which were written by co-producer and former Trixter axeman Steve Brown. First up, ‘Walkin’ On The Moon’ provides ample crunch and also a more confident vocal delivery, but Frehley’s limited tone seem more suited to the power-pop grooves of ‘Cherry Medicine’ and ‘Back Into My Arms Again’, although as rays of sunshine they also seem to frazzle the cheesy layers constructed around them.

Thankfully, there are a few decent rockers to speak of, namely ‘Fightin’ For Life’ and ‘Up In The Sky’, which is more guitar driven as Frehley spouts on about extraterrestrials. However, this is not the hard rockin’ outing some may have hoped for. There is variation though with the bluesy moods on a cover rendition of Nadia’s ‘Life Of A Stranger’, ‘Cosmic Heart’ with its airy arena feel and scorching solo, and ‘Blinded’ whereby Frehley bemoans society’s reliance on technology.

More bubblegum n’ sunshine than metallic force, Ace Frehley’s latest album exists as a whimper lost in the wind: frail of voice and low on wattage.

Neil Arnold

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