Lordi. Mama.

This is Lordi. This is my mama (and my step-dad). Lordi just won the Eurovision song contest. My mama just returned home after visiting Flame-Haired Angel and me here, in Paris. Lordi dress up as monsters and play hard rock. They cite KISS as an influence. (Um, duh.) In 1976, my mama took me to a KISS concert: the Philadelphia Spectrum, the Rock ‘n’ Roll Over tour. I was eight. It was a birthday present, and it blew my mind: the noise, the crowd, the smoke, the platform boots, the makeup, the confetti canon, Gene Simmons’ tongue. Today, thirty years later, that my mom took her eight-year-old to a KISS concert is what blows my mind. For some years after 1976, my mom would tell the story of the concert. “When the world ends,” she’d say to her suburban friends, “I’ll know before you do, because I already know what it sounds like.” Thanks, Mom. As for Lordi, it doesn’t take an old kiss fan to love a band with an album called The Arockalypse. Play it in vivid monstereo.