CoronaVinyl Day 370 (K): Creatures of the Night by KISS

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Today's CoronaVinyl category is "K," and while I have some non-KISS albums by "K" artists, I still have enough KISS albums left that I'm going to mix them in when K comes around.  Today, it was the band's excellent 1982 album Creatures of the Night, their tenth studio album.

By 1982, KISS was at a crossroads.  For all the success they had in the second half of the '70s and for all the rabid fans they had acquired, they really fucked things up for a few years there.  1979's Dynasty album was a Top 10 album and featured one of their biggest hits, "I Was Made For Lovin' You," which went to #11 on the Billboard Hot 100.  The problem was that it was a disco rock song, which alienated a lot of the band's fans.  Original drummer Peter Criss left the band after Dynasty and was replaced by Eric Carr.  1980's Unmasked took the band in a more poppy direction, and that was followed up by the 1981 concept album Music From "The Elder," which was the soundtrack to a film that was never made.  It was an unmitigated disaster and was the band's lowest-charting album (#75) since 1974's Hotter Than Hell.  After "The Elder," original guitarist Ace Frehley left the band.  Though he was still featured on the Creatures of the Night album cover, Frehley did not play on or otherwise contribute to the album.

Creatures of the Night was a decided return to hard rock, and it was exactly what KISS needed at that point in their career.  The album just plain rocks.  Even the only power ballad on the album, "I Still Love You," has more grit and passion than anything on their prior two albums.  Creatures of the Night is definitely my favorite KISS album from the '80s, and had they not had such a disastrous prior three years, I think this album would have been huge.  As it was, it only went to #45 on the Billboard album chart, didn't have a charting single on the Billboard Hot 100, and didn't go gold in the U.S. until 1994.

Vinnie Vincent replaced Frehley as the band's lead guitarist, and he brought an immediate punch, both with his playing and songwriting.  He co-wrote three songs and played lead guitar on six songs.  Blues guitarist Robben Ford played guitar on two tracks, and Mr. Mister guitarist Steve Farris and Adam Mitchell (who co-wrote three songs on the album) played guitar on the title track.  Also, Bryan Adams and his longtime songwriting partner Jim Vallance wrote two songs on the album with Gene Simmons.

This was the last album the band made before going "unmasked" in 1983, when they famously appeared on MTV without their makeup for the first time, and this album helped put KISS back in the hard rock consciousness during the rest of the decade.  "I Love It Loud" featured a solid video that got some airplay on MTV, a first for the group on the fledgling network.  That song, "War Machine," the title track, and "I Still Love You" have been live staples for the band over the years, particularly the first two.

Interesting tidbit:  this was the first album the band recorded for PolyGram/Mercury, and some early pressings of Creatures of the Night mistakenly contained one full side of John Cougar's American Fool, who was also a Mercury artist at the time.  My copy of the album does not feature The Coug'.

Favorite Song on Side 1:  "Rock and Roll Hell"
This is one of the two songs that was co-written by Gene, Bryan Adams, and Jim Vallance.  It's a plodding hard rock song in which Gene implores an unknown deity, "get me out of this rock and roll hell."

Favorite Song on Side 2:  "Killer"
The second side of the album is great.  "I Love It Loud" is awesome, with Eric Carr's thunderous drums providing the backbone.  "War Machine" (the other song co-written by Adams and Vallance) is a heavy, dark song.  But I have to give the slight edge to "Killer," a fast-paced, in-your-face hard rock song, with great guitar work from Vincent.