This year, Every Sunday Evening, Album Rock WXYG, The GOAT will be featuring a full album at 8:00 PM from the halcyon musical days of 1976. 1976 was one of the top Years in Album Rock history. Another year of tough choices every week. So many great ones to choose from. After 52 Weeks of featuring so many of the great albums that debuted in 1975, next Sunday we will be moving on to another amazing year of ALBUM ROCK EXCELLENCE, 1976.
We hope you’ll tune in at 8:00 PM, Next Sunday, February 22, 2026, for “Destroyer”, the fourth studio album by Kiss, released on March 15, 1976, by Casablanca Records in the US.
It was the third successive Kiss album to reach the top 40 in the US, as well as the first to chart in Germany and New Zealand. The album was certified gold by the RIAA on April 22, 1976, and platinum on November 11 of the same year, the first Kiss album to achieve platinum.
The pressure was on Kiss for their fifth release, and the band knew it. Their breakthrough, Alive!, was going to be hard to top, so instead of trying to recreate a concert setting in the studio, they went the opposite route. Destroyer is one of Kiss' most experimental studio albums, but also one of their strongest and most interesting. Alice Cooper/Pink Floyd producer Bob Ezrin was on hand, and he strongly encouraged the band to experiment -- there's extensive use of sound effects (the album's untitled closing track), the appearance of a boy's choir ("Great Expectations"), and an orchestra-laden, heartfelt ballad ("Beth"). But there's plenty of Kiss' heavy thunder rock to go around, such as the demonic "God of Thunder" and the sing-along anthems "Flaming Youth," "Shout It Out Loud," "King of the Night Time World," and "Detroit Rock City" (the latter a tale of a doomed concert-goer, complete with violent car-crash sound effects). But it was the aforementioned Peter Criss ballad, "Beth," that made Destroyer such a success; the song was a surprise Top Ten hit (it was originally released as a B-side to "Detroit Rock City"). Also included is a song that Nirvana would later cover ("Do You Love Me?"), as well as an ode to the pleasures of S&M, "Sweet Pain." Destroyer also marked the first time that a comic-book illustration of the band appeared on the cover, confirming that the band was transforming from hard rockers to superheroes.
Tune In and Turn On Sunday evening, February 22nd, and every Sunday evening at 8:00 PM for The GOAT'S "The Long Play with Al Neff”.
