It’s been a while since the last Ace Frehley album. Sure, 2020 gave us the covers album, Origins Vol.2, but it’s six years since the excellent Spaceman hit the racks, making it high time that Ace returned to earth for a follow up. Fortunately, with 10,000 Volts, the Spaceman lands with all the force of a comet, kicking out a more-than-worthy successor to Spaceman and arguably delivering his finest solo effort to date.
As befitting its title, the album positively blazes into life with the hard-hitting rock ‘n’ roll of 10,000 Volts. Arguably one of the best songs Kiss never wrote, it packs a stinging riff, Ace’s inimitable New York drawl, and a chorus that’ll eat up all the band width in your brain. It’s a hell of an opening number, and a reminder of just what Ace can do when he’s in the mood. It’s followed by the equally memorable Walkin’ On The Moon – a hard rocking love letter with a monstrous great riff, the sort of Beatles’ melodies that Kiss made their specialty back in the day, and a suitably fiery solo. Pulsing keyboards announce Cosmic Heart, but this is just a diversion tactic, and Ace unloads a riff so utterly ferocious it wouldn’t sound out of place on an Ozzy album. With its autobiographical lyric, it’s a menacing blast of hard-rock-bordering-on-metal, delivered with a master’s touch, and possessed of a typically inspiring chorus. Recently released single Cherry Medicine offers the closest thing here to Ace’s debut solo effort, thanks to a stripped back verse that places a worthy focus on the lyrics. However, get past the simple, slashing riff, and you’ll land on a glorious pop-punk chorus, incongruously reminiscent of Blink 182, and delivered with such panache you’ll be humming it for weeks. The first half of the album lands on a more reflective note with Back Into My Arms Again, which taps into a similar vein to the recent effort from the Rolling Stones, as it marries classic melodies with ultra-modern production techniques.
Kicking off side two, the frantic Fightin’ For Life is another track that bridges the gap between Ace’s hard rock past and the crunchy metal of Ozzy’s recent output. Like the Master of Darkness, Ace captures that sense of a lifetime spent devoted to music, with the result that it’s both nostalgic and defiant, with earthquake riffs leading up to a solo that comes raging from the speakers. Next up, classic rock gets the upper hand as Ace unleashes a potent riff (there’s even room for some cowbell), leading into the storming Blinded, which comes complete with banks of backing vocals, frantic lead, and an eerie undercurrent of paranoia. Barely pausing for breath, Ace takes 50s rock ‘n’ roll and spins it through his hard rock zoetrope on Constantly Cute, and it’s only really on Life Of A Stranger that he takes things down a notch. A lovely song, it still builds up one hell of a head of steam, with the only slight disappointment that it fades out on the solo. The mid-tempo stomp of Up In The Sky points to an optimistic future for Ace, while the concluding Stratosphere provides the album with a glorious, instrumental coda, Ace demonstrating his chops with a fluid grace that will leave the jaws of his detractors firmly on the floor. It’s a wonderful end to an album that connects on every level.
With its gleaming, modern production, hard hitting tracks and consistently impressive musicianship, 10,000 Volts may just be Ace Frehley’s greatest album to date. Over the course of eleven tracks, we get to enjoy hard rock and metal vying for supremacy amidst Ace’s wide range of influences, choruses that just don’t quit, and a performance from Ace that frequently sends shivers down the spine. Ultimately, whether you’re a kiss fan, a hard rock fan, or just a fan of great guitar work, 10,000 Volts, like Spaceman before it, is a whole heap of rock ‘n’ roll fun you’ll want to explore. 9/10
