Creatures of the Night

Creatures of the Night is the tenth studio album by American rock band Kiss, released in 1982. It was the band's last for Casablanca Records, the only label for which Kiss had recorded up to that point. The album was dedicated to the memory of Casablanca founder and early Kiss supporter Neil Bogart, who had died of cancer during the recording sessions. It is also the band's last album recorded with Ace Frehley credited as an official member and their first album with Vinnie Vincent, as the initially uncredited lead guitarist. Vincent would later be credited but not featured on the cover of the 1985 reissue of the album. It was also Kiss's last album to feature the band with their trademark makeup until the release of Psycho Circus in 1998.

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 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 U.S. 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.

Fan hopes were raised in 1980 when Kiss announced that they were going to make 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 U.S. Unmasked Tour just a short time before, the band then called off the planned tour for Music from "The Elder."

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. Using a clause in their Casablanca contract that gave the band an option to leave the label if Bogart died, 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.

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). 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.

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. Paul Stanley called Kiss "a heavy metal band" in 1982. "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. 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 Bachman–Turner Overdrive, where the original version of this Simmons/Adams/Vallance song was 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. 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. 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; this confirmed the same from an earlier Mitchell interview. 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."