Creatures of the Night

By 1982, Kiss's popularity in the US had plummeted due to changing musical tastes and their move away from the anthemic hard rock of their earlier material. 1979's Dynasty, while commercially successful, alienated many fans with the disco-flavored track "I Was Made for Lovin' You." 1980's Unmasked fell further into a pop rock/power pop oriented sound and was Kiss's first album not to achieve platinum status since 1975's Dressed to Kill. The band did not even tour the US for Unmasked, and it also soon faced its first lineup change: founding member Peter Criss, who had not participated in any of the Unmasked recording sessions, officially left Kiss in 1980 and was replaced by Eric Carr.[4][5]

Fan hopes were raised in 1980 when Kiss announced that they were going to record their heaviest record yet. Instead, the band released Music from "The Elder" in late 1981, a concept album originally intended to complement a film called The Elder that was ultimately never filmed. Despite confidence from producer Bob Ezrin that this would recreate the success from 1976's Destroyer, the album did not improve the band's status, and on the contrary, further diminished Kiss' US fanbase, failed to achieve gold status, and having cancelled their US Unmasked Tour just a short time before, the band then called off the planned tour for Music from "The Elder."[4]

Kiss's label situation had changed as well. Casablanca Records founder Neil Bogart had sold the label to its distributor PolyGram in 1980, and went on to briefly form Boardwalk Records before being diagnosed with and later succumbing to cancer.[6] Using a clause in their Casablanca contract that gave the band an option to leave the label if Bogart did, Kiss became free agents and signed a multimillion-dollar deal with Mercury Records. Mercury, a label also owned by PolyGram, reverted the band to their "old" label, though in name only.[7]

The album represented a conscious effort by Kiss to return to the hard rock style that had helped them achieve commercial success with Destroyer (1976) and Love Gun (1977).[8] The first key ingredient was songwriter/guitarist Vinnie Vincent, who was soon to replace Frehley as the band's new lead guitarist after being introduced to the band by album co-writer Adam Mitchell.[9]

Musically, the progressive elements of Music from "The Elder" and the pop affectations of Dynasty and Unmasked were completely absent from Creatures of the Night, making it the heaviest album the group had made at that point.[10][11] Paul Stanley called Kiss "a heavy metal band" in 1982.[12] "I Still Love You", the only ballad on Creatures of the Night, was still heavier and darker than any ballad Kiss had released in earlier years. Also contributing to the heavy sound was Carr's drumming style, which was more similar to John Bonham's drumming than to Criss' jazz-influenced style.[13] Creatures of the Night is the first Kiss album to have all lead vocal duties handled by either Gene Simmons or Stanley exclusively. All previous studio releases by the group contained at least one song with lead vocals by another band member.

The song "Rock and Roll Hell" is a rewrite of the song of the same title on the 1979 album Rock n' Roll Nights by Canadian band BTO, where the original version of this Simmons/Adams/Vallance song credited to Jim Vallance only.

Kiss had used "ghost players" on previous albums, most notably Bob Kulick (Alive II and Killers) and Dick Wagner (Destroyer), but Vincent handled most of the lead guitar as a session player and co-writer before being added as the full-time replacement for Frehley, though as an employee and not a full member (like Carr). Blues guitarist Robben Ford, a friend of the album's producer Michael James Jackson, contributed two solos in what he described as one of his weirdest gigs.[14] Mr. Mister guitarist Steve Farris (who was considered as a replacement for Frehley but was thought to not have "the right look") provided the solo and lead fills to the title track.[15] Co-writer Mitchell also contributed guitar work to the title track. Though often given credit for playing the solos on "Keep Me Comin'" and "Danger", Kulick admitted in a 2011 interview that none of the studio work he did on Creatures of the Night made it to the album;[16] this confirmed the same from an earlier Mitchell interview.[17] Jimmy Haslip (former member of Blackjack), Tommy Bolin Band and Street Punk declared in 2008 that he was invited by James Jackson to record five songs (Simmons allegedly refused to play his bass parts due to the end of his relationship with Diana Ross), but Haslip only confirmed that he recorded "Danger."[18]

Though Ace Frehley did not play on the album, his face was still featured on the album cover for contractual and commercial reasons. Frehley had been pushing the band to do a heavy rock record since Dynasty, and by the time of Creatures of the Night, he was fully disillusioned with the band; alcoholism and a prescription medicine dependency (begun after a car wreck) led to him not participating in the recording sessions. In fact, when recording sessions for Creatures of the Night began in July 1982, Kiss was essentially a trio. It was only after the album was released and a short promotional tour of Europe was completed that Frehley officially left Kiss.[10] The lead guitar replacement for Frehley for the Creatures of the Night Tour/10th Anniversary Tour in the U.S. was Vincent, adopting his Egyptian Ankh makeup, hastily designed by Stanley.

Speaking to Record Mirror in 1982, Stanley explained the album title as "Basically, we feel that everybody is a creature of the night. We're all less inhibited and we're all vampires. The night makes people feel free and then by the cold light of dawn we crawl home to our coffins to behave like normal people during the day."[8]

It has been speculated that the original 1982 cover was modeled after the 1979 children's book, I Can Read About Creatures of the Night.[19] In the early days of KISS 1972 -73, there was a band on the same New York circuit by the name of "Creatures of the Dark" the members dressed as characters from the Universal Monster Film Series; Dracula, Wolfman, Frankenstein's Monster and the Mummy.

Three official variations on the album artwork exist: the 1982 original issue; the 1985 reissue, featuring Stanley, Carr, Gene Simmons, and then-current guitarist Bruce Kulick—who did not play on the album—all without make-up; and the 1997 remastered version (same photo as the original, but with minor variations in the logo and lettering). There is also a bootlegged LP that claims to be a Brazilian promo version that features Vincent in make-up airbrushed over Frehley.

The band released a video for "I Love It Loud," which received moderate airplay on MTV. In it was a stage set up that featured Carr's drum kit as a giant metallic tank with an exploding turret. Flames and explosions were also in abundance. Frehley did appear in the video as the rhythm guitarist, with Stanley shown playing the seven-note solo.

The album is the band's most represented of their 1980s material over the course of their career in their live setlists by a wide margin and it is their fourth most represented album overall. "I Love It Loud" is a setlist staple performed at nearly all of their shows, with over 1500 performances, and "War Machine" has also been played on most of their tours, having been performed over 900 times. In addition, the album's title track and "I Still Love You" have both been performed over 300 times each.[20]

Professional ratings

Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	[21]
Collector's Guide to Heavy Metal	7/10[22]
Encyclopedia of Popular Music	[23]
Pitchfork	1.5/10[24]
The Rolling Stone Album Guide	[25]

Despite positive reviews, the album did not return the band to the commercial success they had held five years prior. Despite charting higher than The Elder (No. 45, compared to The Elder's No. 75),[26] Creatures of the Night would not attain gold status until 1994.[27] The album would receive critical recognition, with both Kerrang! and Guitar World magazines placing the album at No. 5 on their lists of best hard rock albums in 1982.[28][29] In 2022, Creatures of the Night was named No. 4 of 'The 25 greatest rock guitar albums of 1982' list in Guitar World.[30]

Carr noted in an interview that Creatures of the Night was his favorite Kiss record on which he played.[31]

Creatures of the Night was certified gold by the RIAA on May 9, 1994.[27] It was certified gold in Brazil in 1983 for sales of 100,000 copies.[32]

In 2022, a super deluxe edition of the album was released in multiple configurations on CD, vinyl and streaming. The most extensive, a five CD + Blu-ray audio disc, features a total of 103 songs including a new remastered version of the album, 2 discs of demos and studio outtakes (including all 4 new songs from Killers and 3 unreleased songs from the Elder-era Penny Lane session), and 2 discs of live soundboard recordings from the 1982-83 tour for the album.[33] The first single from this re-release was the song Betrayed, a re-working of a Vinnie Vincent demo from his earlier band Warrior with new lyrics and vocals by Paul Stanley.[34]

All credits adapted from the original release.[35]

• On the 1985 non-make-up release, the song "Creatures of the Night" is remixed, and "Saint and Sinner" and "Killer" are interchanged from side to side with each other. Also, for the 1985 reissue, engineer Dave Wittman remixed three tracks: "Creatures of the Night", "I Love It Loud" and "War Machine".
• Some of the earliest pressings of the album mistakenly contained one full side of John Cougar's American Fool. Both Kiss and Cougar were under the umbrella of Mercury Records at the time.

• Casablanca NBLP-7270: LP
• Casablanca NBLS-7270: Cassette
• Casablanca NBL8-7270: 8-track

• Creatures of the Night at Discogs (list of releases)