If there’s one thing you can always count on Gene Simmons for it’s that he’s definitely going to pick a one-sided fight for absolutely no reason when given the chance. With that in mind, you won’t be surprised to hear he took some shots at ABBA recently over the pop group’s digital avatar show, Voyage, saying that KISS’ show will be “leaps and bounds” better.
“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,” Simmons said during an appearance on The Zak Kuhn Show podcast — as transcribed by Blabbermouth — adding that “the technology has advanced by leaps and bounds” over the last few years.
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The KISS avatars were created by Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) and were financed and produced by the Swedish company Pophouse Entertainment Group, the company behind “ABBA Voyage.” Notably, Pophouse was founded by ABBA’s Björn Ulvaeus and will create digital versions of KISS to keep the band “on the road” for years to come.
“I don’t know how to describe it, but so far we’re just calling it KISS avatars,” Gene Simmons said about the project, which was first teased at the final KISS concert in New York in December 2023. “It’ll be seen around the world.”
Going on to “try to describe” the as-yet-untitled show, the KISS icon explained, “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.”
Gene Simmons was eventually asked if the KISS avatar show would “totally blow away” ABBA Voyage. “It already does,” he replied, then added, “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,” he continued. “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.”
