Gene Simmons Gives Honest Opinion Of ABBA

KISS bassist/vocalist Gene Simmons recently praised the upcoming KISS avatar show and said “the technology has advanced by leaps and bounds” in the last few years.

The technology which is used for the KISS avatars was originally developed for ABBA’s “Voyage” show in London, will allow KISS to stay “on the road” in retirement. The KISS avatars were created by Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) and were financed and produced by the Swedish company Pophouse Entertainment, which is behind “ABBA Voyage”.

Cutting-edge technology will be used and Pophouse Entertainment Group, which was founded by ABBA’s Björn Ulvaeus, will create digital versions of KISS. The project was previewed at the final KISS concert in New York in December 2023.

During an appearance on The Zak Kuhn Show podcast, Simmons spoke about KISS avatar and said:

“Well, you may have read or not, there’s a terrific company called Pophouse who are responsible for that ABBA avatar show outside of London, which has pulled millions of tickets, actually, and is quite a thing. But even that technology is now yesterday’s news.

“I don’t know how to describe it, but so far we’re just calling it KISS avatars,” he continued. “It’ll be seen around the world. And I’ll try to describe it. When you put on virtual glasses, you get a 360-degree experience. Wherever you turn your head, you’re in that universe; you’re in a parallel universe, if you will. You could be in the land of dinosaurs or falling off a cliff or you pick your head up to the sky and you see the sky. And you lower your chin and you look like a chasm with your feet falling. So you actually believe, to the extent that you shut off your mind, that you’re actually in that world. Now imagine not wearing glasses and having that experience.”

Asked if the KISS avatar show will “totally blow away” “ABBA Voyage”, Simmons said: “It already does, yeah. Uh-huh… Technology, I’m sure you keep up with it, is growing by leaps and bounds… The future is here. A.I. now fixes itself and teaches itself. And so the technology has advanced by leaps and bounds even where the ABBA show was. You could swear ABBA was live on stage, but you have to look straight forward. If you look to the left or right, you can see your neighbor sitting behind you or next to you. And so you have that kind of, ‘Oh, this is reality. And what’s on stage looks like reality.’ But as you know, with 3D glasses, virtual glasses, your sense of what’s real and what’s not is skewed. So there’s all that.”