KISS tribute bands are usually something you can only experience live, it's very rare for them to disappear into the studio to record a tribute album. However KISS Forever Band from Hungary are about to change that with the release of their premier album - Carnival Of Songs. The first thing that strikes you with this album is quality - it's a full blown professionally produced CD not a CDR as you might expect, a lot of money has clearly gone into this. The packaging consists of a fold out poster of the band and separate shots of each band member - as you can see from the pictures on this page I'm not bull-shitting when I say you need to look twice to make sure it's not the real thing!

The CD features a whole load of classic KISS tunes along with one or 2 from the Revenge era, the full track list is as follows:-

• Love Gun
• Calling Dr.Love
• 2000 Man
• I Was Made For Lovin' You
• I Love It Loud
• Beth
• Rock and Roll All Nite
• Firehouse
• Domino (latin version)
• Shock me
• God Gave Rock 'n Roll To You
• Black Diamond
• Dragster/Gyorsulas Intro (bonus)
• I Was Made For Lobin' You...(Disco remix)

Like I said before you rarely get chance to hear how a tribute band sounds in a studio, if this cd does anything it shows that these guys really know their instruments, the sound is awesome. Many of the tracks are a hybrid between the original KISS versions and live KISS versions, such as the Alive III ending of God Gave.. and the start of I Love It Loud. The band really needs to be commended for originality too - they have produced a very cool latin version of Domino, and a disco version of I Was Made For Lovin' You! The version of Beth comes complete with an original piano soundtrack, with the vocals sounding very close to the Eric Carr version put out by KISS in the late 80's. In fact, the vocals on all the songs are of high quality, especially when you consider that the aren't singing in their native tongue (they're from Hungary).

Overall this is an excellent tribute album that deserves to be in any KISS collection, I especially liked their personal take on Domino along with the classic versions of RARAN and God Gave.. I look forward to seeing KISS Forever Band live, they are currently considering a possible tour of the UK!