At last I've got my hands on the newly released Japan-only album "Jigoku-Retsuden". Roughly translated as either 'Glorious Tale of Hell' or 'Biography of Hell' this album features 15 tracks that have been rerecorded by the current line-up. Lots of people are pretty mad with this thinking it's completely pointless - was it really necessary to fix something that was never broken in the first place? Well in my opinion I think it's well worth buying, Gene isn't stupid, by doing this KISS now retain the rights to these recordings meaning they can be used anywhere and they'll now get a cut of the profits (for example in future editions of Guitar Hero etc). And apart from that it's pretty damn good too.

First thing you'll notice is that a lot of the recordings are kept faithful to the originals, with the audio quality benefiting with a far clearer mix. I'm not saying by any means that these are better than the originals but they are very very good, definitely a great album to have if you're new to KISS. Highlights for me were Heaven's On Fire, Black Diamond (with Eric on vocals) and Forever (not as bad as I was expecting seeing how the Bruce version is one of my favourite KISS tracks).

Will this ever get an official UK release? Well, who knows, it was expected to be given away with the Mail on Sunday a few months back but that never happened. Judging by the fact it's now number one on the CdJapan website I think a lot of people over here have already imported it... I bought my copy from CdJapan here and it took less than a week to arrive: http://www.cdjapan.co.jp/detailview.html?KEY=DFCP-56 (you can also listen to clips here).

The track list is as follows:-

1. DEUCE
2. DETROIT ROCK CITY
3. SHOUT IT OUT LOUD
4. HOTTER THAN HELL
5. CALLING DR.LOVE
6. LOVE GUN
7. I WAS MADE FOR LOVIN' YOU
8. HEAVEN'S ON FIRE
9. LICK IT UP
10. I LOVE IT LOUD
11. FOREVER
12. CHRISTINE SIXTEEN
13. DO YOU LOVE ME
14. BLACK DIAMOND
15. ROCK AND ROLL ALL NITE