Look ye, KISS fans, as flesh becomes franchise.

Saturday night was supposed to be the end for rock icons KISS—the final night of the final tour, the end of the End of The Road World Tour, a swan song so long and so deafening that it had reverberated across five continents and hundreds of stadiums, spanning 58 months and nearly killing the band’s frontman, Paul Stanley, in the process.

As midnight neared in Madison Square Garden, the ascending minor chords of the group’s final encore—“God Gave Rock n’ Roll To You”—drifted up into the rafters, the New York City night, and to the home audiences paying $39.99 on Pay-per-view. The heavens, too. Five decades of heavy metal and heavy makeup, after all, were about to end.

And then came the holographic rapture.

Luminous and levitating, the members of KISS ascended. Not those earthly forms known as Gene Simmons, Paul Stanley, and the “newbies” Eric Singer and Tommy Thayer; they’d vanished, presumably backstage. It was time for their avatars—Demon, the Starchild, Catman, and Spaceman—to take over the performance as colossal figures that, through a combination of LED screen projection, lasers, and heavy metal smoke and pyrotechnics, appeared three dimensional and much larger than life.

Demon, now 8 feet tall, sprouted wings. Starchild’s fingertips crackled with pink lightning. And the group, having shuffled off their AARP-eligible mortal coils, entertained those who had, like them, put their faith in loud guitars.

KISS had been transfigured into that higher form: licensed intellectual property. Their avatars could now roam into the multiverse, the metaverse, and with any luck, some kind of an extended run in Vegas.

The technological mages behind........

© Fast Company