The band's new digital avatars could perform for decades to come.
The band Kiss may have performed its final show, but its members will continue to rock and roll all night and party every day—as lifelike digital avatars.
The rock band “has been immortalized and reborn as avatars to rock forever,” announced a video posted to Kiss’ YouTube channel on Sunday, the day after the band played New York’s Madison Square Garden for its very last concert. At the end of Saturday’s performance, the band’s new digital dopplegangers, sporting their signature face makeup, materialized on stage to perform an encore of “God Gave Rock And Roll To You” and introduce their new era as digital-only rockers.
The avatars performed dressed as fantasy-based superheroes—a winged bassist and co-founder Gene Simmons breathed fire and hovered above the stage, while another Kiss member looked out at fans with glowing eyes.
“We can live on eternally,” lead vocalist Paul Stanley says in the video detailing the band’s transition. “The band deserves to live on because the band is bigger than we are.”
On stage with Kiss, the digital version, whose members can hover.
Stanley co-founded the group with Simmons in 1973. The video shows the two of them, along with lead guitarist Tommy Thayer and drummer Eric Singer, on a sound stage shock-rocking in motion capture suits. The gear allowed the team at Industrial Light & Magic, the visual effects company founded by George Lucas, to create avatars that can mimic the band’s facial expressions and on-stage body movements to keep their digital doppelgangers authentic.
“The future is so exciting,” Simmons says in the video.
ILM also brought to life avatars of Swedish band Abba to perform together 40 years after their final concert in 1982. Pophouse Entertainment Group, a Swedish entertainment company co-founded by Abba's Björn Ulvaeus, teamed with ILM for the Abba avatar concerts and will do the same for Kiss. Pophouse says Kiss fans should expect to see avatars of the band perform for decades to come.
“The technology is going to make Paul jump higher than he’s ever done before,” Simmons said.
But what do fans think of the new digital rockers? In comments on Kiss’ Instagram posts, they keep on shoutin’.
"Looks like a bad PC game from the early 2000s. Just walk away and leave us with our memories," an Instagram user wrote in one of the more kid-friendly critiques. But plenty of fans defended their favorites.“There’s literally nothing Kiss can’t do,” another said. “Love this.”
Kiss lead singer Paul Stanley gets fitted with a motion capture suit so ILM effects wizards can ... [+]
