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“If there weren’t brave people like you – I wouldn’t be here, and neither would my mother,” Gene Simmons told Harold “Hal” Urban, who participated in liberating Mauthausen in May 1945.

An extraordinary moment of historical significance and personal gratitude unfolded Monday evening in Washington when Gene Simmons, the 75-year-old frontman of legendary rock band KISS, encountered Harold “Hal” Urban, a 100-year-old World War II veteran who participated in liberating the concentration camp where Simmons’ mother was imprisoned as a teenager.

Their meeting during the American Memorial Day parade marked the first time the two men had met, despite their lives being forever connected by the events of May 1945. Urban, still wearing his original military jacket from the liberation, represented one of the American heroes who helped end the Holocaust’s systematic murder of European Jewry.

When Simmons approached Urban during the parade, the rock star’s usual theatrical persona gave way to raw emotion. Without his characteristic Kiss makeup, Simmons clasped Urban’s hand and delivered words that encapsulated decades of unspoken gratitude, “If there weren’t brave people like you – I wouldn’t be here, and neither would my mother. I thank you from the bottom of my heart.”

Urban’s memories of liberating Mauthausen remain vivid and traumatic even at age 100. He described the overwhelming stench of burning human remains, emaciated prisoners stumbling in confusion and terror, and the psychological trauma that proved more devastating than conventional combat. His unit buried approximately 500 corpses within 24 hours of the camp’s liberation – a grim testament to the Nazi regime’s systematic extermination efforts.

While Urban cannot definitively recall meeting Flora Klein, Simmons’ mother, during those chaotic liberation days, both were present at Mauthausen when American forces arrived. Klein was just 14 years old, one of thousands of Jewish prisoners whose survival depended entirely on the Allied advance reaching them before the Nazi machinery of death could complete its work.

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In late March 2025, it was announced that Kiss would be “storming Vegas.” People weren’t sure what that meant at first, other than some version, or perhaps a partial version of Kiss, probably with founders and forever holdovers, Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons, performing at the event.

Soon after Kiss Army Storms Vegas was announced, onlookers found out that it was, in fact, true and that Stanley and Simmons would be performing. But not only that, but that they’d be doing so without their trademark kabuki makeup. And as is always the case when Kiss does anything, the rumors began to swirl, and the reactions began to swell. Such is life within the world of Kiss.

In recent weeks, Simmons has made it clear in interviews that, no, Kiss won’t necessarily be performing a whole set. And no, this is not Kiss doubling back on their promise to get off the road, an era which ended on December 2, 2023, at New York’s Madison Square Garden.

And now, in conversation with Guitar Player, Kiss’s Starchild, electric guitar player Paul Stanley, has weighed in, clarifying, with outright simplicity, what Kiss’s forthcoming Vegas shindig actually is. “Let’s just call it a Kiss Kruise,” Stanley says. “But landlocked in Vegas.”

Within that context, the idea of Stanley, Simmons, and company, climbing up onstage as Kiss, without makeup, isn’t a state-of-the-art idea. Historically, Kiss Kruise’s, throughout their 12-year existence, as per the name, have always featured performances by Kiss, without makeup.

They’ve also always featured a roster of bands and artists, ranging from Kiss alumni, such as Bruce Kulick, who will be in Vegas come November, current members of the band, like Tommy Thayer, who will be with Stanley and Simmons in Vegas, and Ace Frehley, who, much to the chagrin of the Kiss Army, will not.

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Looking back on Kiss‘ career, their fanbase was certainly amongst the most diehard and dedicated of any popular music artist past or present. But especially early on in their career, when fans began attending concerts dressed in the same facial make-up design of their favorite Kiss member, and some even replicating their costumes…which must have proven to be quite a nuisance while taking the subway or bus to and from the performance.

During an interview with Q104 New York, Kiss singer and bassist Gene Simmons discussed the early years of the band. And in particular, how the name of their fan club, the Kiss Army, can be traced back to sometime in 1975, and a Kiss fanatic by the name of Bill Starkey.

“There was a guy in Terre Haute, Indiana, as a matter of fact. And in the early days, radio didn’t play Kiss because we didn’t do John Denver kind of namby-pamby stuff. Okay, John Denver fans don’t write for me. I like him too, he’s fine. We just didn’t do the ‘la de dah’ kinds of songs. We liked to turn the guitars up and have fun, and radio wouldn’t play us.”

“So this one guy, Starkey, his name was not Ringo, called the radio station, which was a small building outside of town, ‘Play, Kiss!’ ‘I’m sorry, kid, we don’t play that song.’ And he threatened him. He said, ‘If you don’t play Kiss by 5 pm tomorrow, the Kiss Army will surround your building’ and everything.”

The station failed to call Starkey’s bluff. Soon, local media got involved, which brought further publicity to the then-still-up-and-coming Kiss.

“Of course, they did not. So what happened? The cover of the newspaper, ‘The Kiss Army Invades WXYZ [WVTS], whatever.’ That’s where the name came from. And by the way, afterwards, they played Kiss. Because they knew that we knew what their home address was, and when they weren’t home, we might set their pets on fire. There’s that. That was a decent joke, you could have laughed at that.”

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