Kiss Opens Final Chapter with ‘Modern Day Delilah’

On August 19, 2009, Paul Stanley made a bold statement with the release of “Modern Day Delilah,” the first new song from Kiss in 11 years.

The band’s founding frontman decided to end the studio hiatus that followed the 1998 “reunion” album Pyscho Circus, but only on his terms. He established crucial ground rules: no disco influences, no concept albums, no chasing grunge trends, no ballads, and no outside songwriters or producers.

“I was through second-guessing or being second-guessed,” Stanley stated in his 2014 biography Face the Music: A Life Exposed. “At least if we did something I loved, there would be one big fan regardless of what happened.”

The resulting album, 2009’s Sonic Boom, marked the debut of Kiss’ final lineup, which would go on to become its longest-lasting: Stanley, co-founding bassist Gene Simmons, drummer Eric Singer, who rejoined for the final time in 2004, and lead guitarist Tommy Thayer, who had been performing with the group since 2002.

“The band’s never been better,” Stanley said to Noisecreep in 2009. “It really seems like a time where we could actually – if we put our minds to it – put something together that would be definitive and that we could be proud of.”

They achieved that goal with the lead single, “Modern Day Delilah.” The song featured an infectious stadium-rattling rhythm, an oversized Led Zeppelin-styled riff, and a scorching solo from Thayer. The video for the song, which showed Godzilla-sized versions of the band stomping around New York City, packed all the explosions and stunts of Kiss’ iconic stage shows into just four frenzied minutes.

Although “Modern Day Delilah” just missed the Top 10 on Billboard’s rock airplay chart, peaking at No. 11, its success helped propel Sonic Boom to the No. 2 spot on the Billboard albums chart, a career high for Kiss.

Kiss’ return to the studio was short-lived. The band continued touring until 2023, but their final album, 2012’s Monster, came only three years after Sonic Boom. “It just became a bit frustrating,” Stanley told UCR in 2024. “In terms of working hard to do a great album and having it kind of glossed over because somebody, understandably, wants to hear ‘Love Gun’. I get it. But judging some of the newer material on its own merits, it was and is as good. The great stuff from the last two albums, I’d say, is as good as anything we’d done. At that point, it just became clear that if it’s not fun, it’s not worth doing.”

Watch Kiss Perform ‘Modern Day Delilah’