KISS retired in December 2023. Gene Simmons has now announced his first solo concert.
The 2024 lineup for the Brazilian rock festival Summer Breeze was revealed on Instagram yesterday, January 18.
The Gene Simmons Band will be the main attraction on April 26, the beginning of the festival's three days, along with Mr. Big and Sebastian Bach.
As reported by Loudwire, guitarist Brent Woods (of Sebastian Bach), guitarist Zach Throne (of Corey Taylor), and drummer Brian Tichy (of Whitesnake, Billy Idol, and Foreigner) will be in Gene Simmons' band.
With a new backing band, Gene Simmons went on his most recent solo tour in 2018, hitting the stages in North America, Europe, and Australia.
He performed a variety of KISS hits on that tour, along with songs from his solo albums and covers of Chuck Berry, The Beatles, and Little Richard.
As a solo artist, Simmons has only put out two albums: the eponymous 1978 record and the oddly titled 2004 album "Asshole."
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As part of their "End Of The Road" farewell tour, KISS performed their final gig at Madison Square Garden ever in December.
The glam rock group famously announced at the end of the performance that they were going to be leaving their human form and that, going forward, fans would be able to "see [them] in all different things, all the time" as virtual avatars.
The band ended the evening with a virtual performance of "God Gave Rock and Roll To You II" as they walked offstage. The VFX studio Industrial Light & Magic, owned by George Lucas, and Pophouse Entertainment, a company co-founded by Björn Ulvaeus of ABBA, collaborated on the development of the avatars.
Before, Simmons hinted at the band's potential as a virtual act, saying that the "KISS experience... is immortal" and that their farewell tour merely signified "the end of the road for the band, not the brand".
Simmons revealed that "about 200 million" dollars had been spent on perfecting the technology used to create a show based on the band's virtual avatars, not long after the group's last live performance as humans.
The CEO of Pophouse Entertainment, Per Sundin, was quoted by the BBC as saying that the virtual avatars of KISS members "have superpowers" and that the group wanted to be upfront about their lack of realism in response to the outlet's observation that the group's avatars looked noticeably less realistic than ABBA's.
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