KISS’s Rock And Roll Over Reissue Unearths 100 Unreleased Tracks

There is a moment on Rock And Roll Over, KISS’s fifth album from 1976, where the machinery of arena rock feels genuinely handmade: close-miked drums, guitars riding the red. The Rock And Roll Over reissue, now arriving in multiple configurations for its 50th anniversary, makes a strong case that what was captured in those sessions deserves more than a footnote in the band’s catalogue.

What the Rock And Roll Over Reissue Contains

The standard edition arrives on 1LP and 1CD, remastered from the master tapes by the original producer, Eddie Kramer. Both formats come packaged in a brand-new 50th anniversary rendering of the original album cover, leaning into a dominating gold, red, and black design. A limited edition colour vinyl pressing goes further, housed in a first-ever foil laminate and embossed jacket with metallic gold ink details, accompanied by the original printed sleeve with 50th anniversary metallic gold ink printing and a brand-new 20-inch x 30-inch poster.

The album itself holds up as a document of the band at full commercial velocity. “Hard Luck Woman” and “Calling Dr. Love” both charted as hit singles in the United States, and the sessions that produced them are now excavated in considerably more depth than any previous release has managed.

The Super Deluxe Box Set and Its 130-Track Scale

The Super Deluxe Edition is where the archival ambition becomes genuinely arresting. A 4CD and Blu-ray Audio package assembles 130 total tracks, with 100 tracks and mixes previously unreleased. According to Sonic Perspectives, the Super Deluxe box set is due out on 6 November.

CD 1 carries the original 1976 album mix, newly remastered from the original stereo analogue tapes by Bernie Grundman, who mastered all audio across the project. CD 2 presents a brand-new album stereo mix by Kramer, offering a chance to hear how the sessions might have landed with 50 years of production hindsight applied. The contrast between the two discs will be instructive for anyone who has spent time with Kramer’s work and wondered what he might do differently now.

CD 3 is where the collectors and the obsessives will spend most of their time: 22 unreleased demos, outtakes and alternate mixes, including nine Gene Simmons demos, the Davlen Sound Studios demos, extended mixes, and an unfinished instrumental track called “Queen For A Day.” These are the rough edges that official releases habitually sand away, and their presence here suggests a deliberate commitment to showing the work.

CD 4 draws on four nights at the Nippon Budokan in Tokyo in April 1977, marking the band’s first performances in Japan. The recordings have been newly mixed from the original analogue multi-track tapes by Kramer, who recorded the shows at the time. Live material of this provenance, mixed from the original multi-tracks rather than a board tape, carries a different weight entirely.

The Blu-ray Audio disc adds a Dolby Atmos and 5.1 surround mix of the original 1976 album mix by David Frangioni, alongside a Dolby Atmos and 5.1 surround mix of the new 2026 album mix by Kramer. High-resolution audio runs to 192kHz and 96kHz 24-bit for the remastered 1976 mix, and 96kHz 24-bit for Kramer’s new 2026 stereo mix. The Super Deluxe version also includes a Rock And Roll Over 1976 Press Kit and a 104-page hardcover book featuring liner notes by Ken Sharp, drawn from new interviews with the band and others involved in the original recordings.

A 7″ Single Arrives First

Before the box set lands, the Rock And Roll Over reissue campaign begins with something more contained. As Brave Words reports, a 7″ single featuring the brand-new Eddie Kramer 2026 mix of “Mr. Speed” will be available on 16 October, with an unreleased instrumental demo of “Mr. Speed” on the B-side. It is a considered way to open the campaign: a single track that gestures toward the breadth of the archival dig without front-loading the full reveal.

For a band whose catalogue has been repackaged in various forms over the decades, the scale of this excavation feels proportionate to the source material. The 7″ single is available on 16 October; the full Super Deluxe box set follows on 6 November. Further details are available via KISS.