Ace Frehley at The Wilbur Theatre, Boston, MA – September 22, 2015

The Spaceman, legendary former-KISS guitar player Ace Frehley, returns to Boston in support of his new album Space Invader.

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Worshipper

Local Allston based band Worshipper opened the show, and got the crowd fired up with a sound that is influenced by heavy melodic bands of the past.

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Ace Frehley

Last year Ace Frehley released Space Invader, his first solo album since 2009’s Anomaly. He opened up what was a hard hitting, rocking show with the title track of the disc. Right off the bat, Ace and his band sounded great, and the crowd at the Wilbur was loving it. The setlist covered all corners of Ace’s career, with nearly half of the set being KISS classics.

Everybody sang leads on at least one song. In addition to KISS songs that Ace sang originally, such as “Shock Me,” he also sang leads on songs that originally were sung by Gene Simmons. Any of the KISS songs they played which originally had vocals by Paul Stanley had leads handled by their solid drummer Scot Coogan. Guitar player Richie Scarlet, who originally played in Frehley’s Comet in 1984, sang “Breakout,” off Frehley’s Comet’s 1987 self-titled debut album. Former bass player of The Cult handled vocals on the originally Peter Criss-fronted “Strange Ways.”

The band was very tight, and Ace sounded great. His guitars were very high in the mix, and his playing is what people came to hear, so that was great. Ace has in the past had a reputation of being sloppy, but he impressed me, playing many of his classic solos nearly note-for-note. I was very impressed by Ace’s vocals as well. Hearing Ace sing songs like “Cold Gin” and “Deuce” made me nervous, but he did a fantastic job on them.

I’ve seen KISS a handful of times, but never had the chance to see them with Ace. Getting to hear all these classic solos played by the guy who wrote them was really wonderful. The whole show was rocking and energetic, even if the Boston fire marshall wouldn’t let Ace use his trademark smoke bomb during his guitar solo!