Forty-five years ago today — September 10th, 1975 — KISS released their breakthrough album, Alive!

Captured at shows that year in Detroit, Cleveland, Davenport, Iowa and Wildwood, New Jersey, the two-record set contains a cross-section of 16 songs from their three previous studio albums — KISS, Hotter Than Hell and Dressed to Kill. The first single, “Rock and Roll All Nite,” followed on October 14th, 1975 and is the version that still gets played on radio to this day.

Even the audience tracks were amplified, something Gene Simmons says they wanted.

“The crowd was mixed way up. Record companies and everybody were saying, ‘Well this is crazy. You can barely hear the music.’ We said, ‘No. That’s about the right combination. 50-percent audience and 50-percent us.”

Alive! peaked at number-nine on the Billboard 200 album chart and stayed on the chart for 110 weeks.