Kiss - Creatures Of The Night (1982)

Incredibly this 1982 opus from US glam rockers Kiss was their 10th studio album and the last to feature guitarist Ace Frehley – albeit on the cover only as the guitar work was actually played by future Kiss stalwarts Vinnie Vincent and Bob Kulick, that latter appearing on the track Danger, along with Steve Farris who later went on to form Mr Mister! Whilst never quite succumbing to the whole glam, over-the-top shtick of Kiss this is a solid album of hard rocking tracks benefitting from an incredibly loud production from Michael James Jackson and a very ambient and powerful drum sound and overall is distinctly heavier than many of their preceding recordings.

The title track opens the album and is a real pounding mid-tempo rocker coming across as a mix of Ozzy-era Sabbath and Led Zep’s Immigrant song with, of course, a much updated production. Next up is a brief guitar intro before a thunderous play around the tom toms from Carr and we’re into a mid-tempo triplet beat for Saint and Sinner which is one of the standout tracks here.

Keep Me Comin’ is more in a traditional Kiss style and is a bit more at the clichéd end of the heavy rock spectrum both lyrically and musically – never something from which Kiss shied away however! Unfortunately, as readers will know, severe amounts of brownie points are lost for any track with ‘Rock n Roll’ in its title and so Rock And Roll Hell is not off to a winning start . . . and lyrically and musically again it’s pretty much run of the mill chugging metal of the cheesy kind.

Like a breath of fresh air Danger kicks-in with Bob Kulick on guitar duty and a change in style is immediately apparent as is the effort put into writing this track as it is evidently considerably more than the previous two efforts. We’re also treated to the odd bit of wailing guitar soloing here too – thankfully not by Vinnie Vincent so some melodic overtone exists. Danger is a great track and really puts the album back on track at a time you begin to think it is sinking into mediocrity.

Pump your fists in the air and prepare yourself for an anthem par excellence: I Love it Loud. Now, this is formula metal cheese but is a real classic Kiss track and catchy as Hell . . . very much in the same vein as Rock All Night some years later: although that was rather old hat by that time and had the word ‘Rock’ in the title! This is a real pounding anthem and certainly deserves to be played loud, very loud.

Another real standout track is up next with Creatures of the Night which is, in effect, a ballad but a rather moody and melancholy one at that. Built around a very simple picked guitar part the song builds and builds with Stanley turning in a fine vocal performance conveying the pain end emotion of the tale; emotion being a skill not normally associated with Kiss! The song really makes use of power and musical delicacy switching seamlessly between the thunderous chorus and the subtlety of the verses and the mid-section build and guitar solo are all very in-keeping and carry the mood perfectly.

You’d have to go some way to follow I Still Love You and unfortunately being Kiss, this is a point missed as the album provides the up-tempo Killer which is devoid of riff and musical ideas and doesn’t really belong on the album at all . . . oh yes, and Gene Simmons is on lead vocal too. The album then closes with War Machine which has a classic, menacing riff of which Tony Iommi would be proud and vocals again from Simmons. War Machine actually goes a good way to admonishing the memory of the preceding track as it’s one of the better tracks on the album and the riff is a classic.

Overall this is a good album from Kiss and marked something of a watershed in their career. The departure of Frehley, their diminishing popularity, makeup issues and Peter Criss’s departure etc etc were largely put to bed by Creatures of the Night as it was a solid return to form (in fact I prefer it to much of their earlier material) and paved the way for them to achieve greater success once more later in the 1980s with their follow-up releases Lick It Up and Animalize. You very much get the impression Kiss were making the statement here that, forget all the stuff that had gone before in the previous couple of years, we’re back and mean business . . . and they certainly were and did!

• Paul Stanley – Guitar/Vocals
• Vinnie Vincent – Guitar
• Bob Kulick – Guitar
• Steve Farris – Guitar
• Gene Simmons – Bass
• Eric Carr – Drums