Kiss

Remastered vinyl reissues of the trio’s final two albums

Three months of shows will take place between dates for KISS' mammoth farewell world tour

It's released on May 21

Among my post last week, I received a nice care package from Ace Records that included one quite weird Duke Ellington album ("My People"); Volume 3 of their "Where Country Meets Soul" series (I cannot recommend Ralph ''Soul'' Jackson's version of ''Jambalaya'' highly enough); and, maybe best of all, "Cracking The Cosimo Code", a collection of extraordinary music originating from Cosimo Matassa's New Orleans studio in the 1960s.

Gene Simmons of rockers Kiss has spoken out about his frustration with rap and hip-hop artists being inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall of Fame.

Footage of Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds performing a new song called "Give Us A Kiss" has been uploaded to YouTube. Watch it above. The band unveiled "Give Us A Kiss" on the opening night of their just-finished UK tour in Brighton on October 24. They then played the song again at gigs in London, Manchester, Glasgow and Edinburgh. The recording above comes from their London show on October 26.

Kiss plan to open over 100 restaurants in North America. The band have just opened the third branch of Rock & Brews in the greater Los Angeles area and have said that they wish to open 100 more in the next five years.

Kiss' Gene Simmons has claimed that he was once given $200million to reform Led Zeppelin. The bassist was allegedly handed the money by a promoter to use to tempt surviving members, Robert Plant, Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones, to reunite and tour. Simmons told The Sun: "In 2009/10 I was given a few hundred million dollars in an account by a large concert promoter and given the task of reaching out to Jimmy and Robert and trying to convince them to get back together."

KISS have revealed full details of their new studio album 'Monster'. The album, which is the 20th LP of the metal veterans' career, will be released on October 15 in the UK and October 16 in the US. You can see the album's artwork at the top of the screen. Monster contains a total of 13 tracks, including recent single "Hell Or Hallejulah", which serves as the album's opening track and which you can hear by scrolling down to the bottom of the page.

Kiss' Gene Simmons has branded pop artists such as Rihanna 'fake' in an interview promoting his band's forthcoming US tour.