The album Paul Stanley called the comeback of Kiss
While Kiss were something of an unstoppable force within the hard rock and heavy metal world for much of the 1970s, their commercial success didn’t necessarily always translate into impressive albums.
After this glorious first decade together as a group, which culminated with the release of the polarising Dynasty, the band hit one of their first major creative obstacles and saw the quality of their output decline with the release of a handful of lacklustre albums. Not every band is blessed with the ability to keep the spark lit forever, and at the turn of the ‘80s, it was suggested that the spark might be set to go out for Kiss.
The famous lineup of the band had begun to crumble, with Peter Criss barely featuring on Dynasty in 1979, and he would fail to appear on drums for the entirety of Unmasked the following year, despite still receiving a credit.
Regularly seen as the beginning of the band’s foray into pop territory, their first offering of the 1980s was the most lukewarm reception they’d had for an album since forming, and while that’s not a bad track record for a band to have eight albums in, they were determined to make a comeback.
However, that decline would continue into the recording of their ninth album, Music From The Elder, released in 1981. Eric Carr had assumed drumming duties, replacing the awol Criss, but didn’t necessarily find his feet immediately within the band, and the songwriting from the rest of the group had once again fallen foul of attempting to be something that didn’t fit their collective strengths as a group, with a misguided venture into prog rock territory being the offending genre experiment.
Needing to regroup and find form again, the group were struck by another tragic departure, with Ace Frehley choosing to part company with the band. While he was still credited on the following album, Creatures of the Night, his replacement, Vinnie Vincent, seemed to settle in immediately and helped the band return to their origins in heavy metal. This change in mentality wasn’t a regression, but a necessary switch in the direction of what they were best at, and according to Paul Stanley, was exactly what the band needed.
“We were coming off the Music From The Elder album, which was a left turn down a very dark street for us,” he told Guitar World in 1992.
Adding, “After that, who we were and who we weren’t became clearer to us. We needed to get back home – and I think we did it with a vengeance with Creatures of The Night. It was a very heavy, dark album, and it was probably my first real declaration of who we were. There’s a certain ferocity to a lot of that material, like the title track, ‘Danger’ and ‘War Machine’.”
While the comeback the band desired worked for a period of time, Kiss closed the ‘80s with more lineup turbulence and poorly received releases, but for them to have returned in such sublime and defiant fashion on Creatures of the Night is the mark of a band determined not to give up the ghost.
