US rock band Kiss played their last ever live gig in New York on Saturday, using their final show to reveal their legacy will keep on rocking in digital form.
During the encore of the show at New York City’s famed Madison Square Garden, bandmates Paul Stanley, Gene Simmons, Tommy Thayer and Eric Singer left the stage to reveal digital avatars of themselves.
After the transformation, the virtual Kiss launched into a performance of God Gave Rock and Roll to You.
Kiss frontman Stanley revealed this is the ultimate step to music immortality as, while the rockers might be ageing, their music can live on frozen in time forever.
“What we’ve accomplished has been amazing, but it’s not enough. The band deserves to live on because the band is bigger than we are,” he said.
“It’s exciting for us to go the next step and see Kiss immortalised.”
Iconic bassist Simmons added: “We can be forever young and forever iconic by taking us to places we’ve never dreamed of before.”
The cutting-edge technology, created by the George Lucas-backed special effects company Industrial Light & Magic, will be used to perfect the holographic performers that manage to be even larger-than-life than the band they were initially based on.
The band’s avatars, Demon, the Starchild, Catman, and Spaceman, are depicted as sort-of superhero versions of the band.
This marks the first time a US band has become a permanent, licensed version of intellectual property that can roam the multiverse to perform Kiss music.
The avatars were conceived by Swedish company Pophouse Entertainment, which made headlines with the wildly successful Abba Voyage shows in London, where holograms of the Swedish band perform as their human counterparts appeared in 1979.
Like Abba, Kiss will be able to continue with their musical legacy, frozen in time at the peak of their success, for “eternity”, said
chief executive of Pophouse Entertainment Per Sundin.
“Kiss could have a concert in three cities on the same night across three different continents,” he added.
“That’s what you could do with this.”
