Dressed to Kill by Kiss

Dressed to Kill, the third Kiss album, came out on March 19, 1975, and it was made on the cheap: Casablanca was so strapped for cash that label president Neil Bogart produced it himself with the band rather than pay for a pro. The sessions went down at Electric Lady Studios, and the result is the shortest studio album Kiss ever cut, around half an hour of greasepaint boogie with no fat on it.

Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons split the lead vocals and hammer the riffs like they're bricking up a wall, Ace Frehley's lead guitar sneers and squeals, and Peter Criss keeps the beat as blunt as a street fight. It's the painted New York foursome at their most stripped-down. The keeper is "Rock and Roll All Nite", a shout-along whose title says everything, and its live version has kept coming back to the countdowns.

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