Kiss Bid Farewell on Screen: 'End of the Road' Doc Streams Nov. 19

By Daniel Okafor

Kiss will premiere their farewell-tour documentary, Kiss: End of the Road, on Nov. 19 via a paid livestream on the band's website, with access starting at $14.99 and a seven-day viewing window after the premiere. DJ Viola directed the film, which is expected to reach other platforms over the coming months.

The documentary covers the band's "End of the Road" tour — the trek launched in January 2019 and closed with a grand finale at Madison Square Garden in New York City on Dec. 2, 2023. The new trailer frames fifty years of "Kisstory" as one last celebratory, but chaotic, world tour.

What does the trailer actually show?

Plenty of Kiss' characteristic on-stage theatrics, first of all. It also delivers proclamations in the band's native register. Paul Stanley declares: "Rock and roll is in my blood. I certainly wanted to get back out there to kick ass."

But the trailer doesn't shy away from the trek's rougher moments. It includes the night a dehydrated Gene Simmons had to play sitting down during a concert in Brazil. Even masked rock gods have off nights, apparently.

The clip ends with a snippet of a candid interview with Simmons, still in full makeup and costume, reflecting on the end of it all. "Emotionally, it won't hit me until it hits," he says. "You know your parents are gonna die, but when it happens it's a kick to the gut."

For a band that built a career on fire-breathing spectacle, letting the makeup stay on while the sentiment leaks out is the sharper theatrical choice.

Is the band really done?

The tour was billed as Kiss' last. The band did, however, return to the stage last fall for a special multi-day event in Las Vegas, "Kiss Kruise: Land-Locked in Vegas." Those shows marked the band's first performances without guitarist Ace Frehley, who had died a month before.

The Vegas event is slated to return this year, running Nov. 13 through 15 at Virgin Hotels Las Vegas.

So farewell arrives on a schedule all its own. First the documentary settles the touring account on Nov. 19; then Las Vegas tests whether the corpse paint stays in the drawer a second time.