Kiss will live on as digital avatars following its final concert at Madison Square Garden in New York.
During the encore of their last show on Saturday (Dec. 2), the legendary rockers — co-founders founders Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons as well as guitarist Tommy Thayer and drummer Eric Singer — made a surprise announcement that they will continue on as digitized versions of themselves going forward.
“Kiss Army, your love, your power, has made us immortal!” vocalist/guitarist Stanley said in a video revealing the digital characters as the virtual band launched into a performance of “God Gave Rock and Roll to You.” “The new Kiss era stars now!”
After the concert, part of the Kiss’ End of the Road farewell tour, the quartet shared a two-minute video on YouTube teasing their next chapter.
“The future is so exciting,” Simmons says amid behind-the-scenes snippets of the band wearing motion capture suits to develop their high-tech avatars. Stanley adds, “We can live on eternally.”
Kiss’ avatars were created by George Lucas’ Industrial Light & Magic, in partnership with Sweden’s Pophouse Entertainment Group, according to the Associated Press. The companies recently collaborated on the ABBA Voyage show in London, a virtual concert performed by the Swedish pop group.
“Kiss could have a concert in three cities in the same night across three different continents. That’s what you could do with this,” Pophouse CEO told the AP.
In a roundtable interview, Stanley noted that Kiss “deserves to live on because the band is bigger than we are,” adding, “It’s exciting for us to go the next step and see Kiss immortalized.”
Simmons pointed out that the forthcoming digital band will be able accomplish things the original members couldn’t dream of doing.
“We can be forever young and forever iconic by taking us to places we’ve never dreamed of before,” the bassist said. “The technology is going to make Paul jump higher than he’s ever done before.”
Watch Kiss’ “New Era” promo video below.
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