Gene Simmons  Band Announces 2024 Festival Appearance.

The dust is still settling from KISS’s landmark farewell shows last month. The legendary rockers blew the roof off of Madison Square Garden twice, and put an end to their touring career. Although they’re set to return as avatars, at least one member of the band isn’t quite done performing live.

On Wednesday, the lineup for Summer Breeze 2024 in Sao Paolo, Brazil confirmed the Gene Simmons Band as headliners alongside Within Temptation and Mercyful Fate. Other featured acts include Sebastian Bach, Epica, Hammerfall, Anthrax, Killswitch Engage, and Mr. Big, who are on their farewell tour. The festival is set for this April 26 through April 28. Check out the full lineup below.

The Gene Simmons Band features Simmons on bass and lead vocals, reportedly alongside guitarist Brent Woods (Sebastian Bach, Vince Neil), and drummer Brian Tichy (Foreigner, Whitesnake, Billy Idol).

Guitarist Zach Throne (Corey Taylor), who was originally said to be performing with Simmons in a press release from the festival, has confirmed on his Facebook page that he is in fact not joining the band at Summer Breeze.

“Hi Everyone! Despite what you may have heard or read, I am not performing with Gene Simmons in Brazil,” Throne said. “But, thank you all for the well wishes! Cheers!”

Simmons last had the group on the road in the U.S., Europe, and Australia with a different lineup.

At the conclusion of their final show at MSG, KISS made a surprise handover onstage to their new digital avatars who will performed the encore, “God Gave Rock And Roll To You,” marking the withdrawal of the flesh and blood group, yet the continuation of the KISS journey into a new era. The band’s transformation into avatars will ensure their immortalization, while pushing the boundaries of rock and roll performances, as KISS have done throughout their career to date.  This avatar performance will feature KISS as fantasy-based superheroes, and will provide a glimpse of just one of the many and varied ways in which KISS will live on as digital performers through their avatars in the future.

“The band will never stop, because the fans own the band.” frontman Paul Stanley said. “The band deserves to live on, because the band is bigger than we are.”

Achieved through a partnership with Pophouse Entertainment Group, the Swedish entertainment company renowned for its development of brand-building enterprises in music and entertainment, this end-of-show performance marks the official reveal of plans for a new era of KISS in the near future – which will see avatars of the band perform to fans for decades to come. KISS’s long history of experimenting with special effects and staging, as well as iconic personas and costumes, will evolve through pioneering technology.

The KISS avatars are created by the George Lucas-founded visual effects company (and Lucasfilm division), Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), who showcase their unique creative expertise and artistry using their advanced performance-capture technology. The technology has enabled ILM to capture the band’s face and body performance, forming the basis of the avatars in combination with ILM’s artistry and machine learning technology, allowing the creative essence of KISS to be able to live on forever. ILM’s previous work includes credits on iconic movies and franchises such as Star Wars, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and groundbreaking episodic series such as The Mandalorian, amongst others.