Kiss Fights Grunge to a Draw on ‘Carnival of Souls’: Retro Review

Just like Wile E. Coyote can’t stop chasing the Road Runner, Kiss have rarely been able to resist changing their sound to keep up with the latest music trends.

To the dismay of fans of their original hard rock sound, the group pursued disco on 1979’s Dynasty, tried to deliver their own version of Pink Floyd’s The Wall with 1981’s Music From ‘The Elder’ and mimicked Bon Jovi’s synth-heavy pop metal on 1987’s Crazy Nights.

When the grunge revolution hit in the early ’90s, bands such as Nirvana and Pearl Jam were quick to express their love and respect for Kiss, citing their ’70s work as inspiration for their own careers and even covering songs like “Do You Love Me” and “Black Diamond” in concert.

The timing was perfect for Kiss to get back to basics and get their well-deserved flowers, which is exactly what they attempted to do on 1992’s widely acclaimed Revenge. But when that praise didn’t result in a hit record, the group shifted to an “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em” approach to grunge for their next album, Carnival of Souls: The Final Sessions.

This time around Paul Stanley did so reluctantly, and later regretted giving into the eagerness of his longtime bandmate Gene Simmons. “I never believed the world needs a second-rate Soundgarden, Metallica or Alice in Chains,” Stanley explained in the 2001 book Kiss: Behind the Mask.

Just as Stanley had the easier time adjusting to the glammed-up ’80s when Kiss first took off their makeup, Simmons enjoyed a sort of home court advantage in the darker, gloomier and more serious grunge era.

It helps that Simmons cheats just a bit, never fully committing to the genre’s trappings. The opening “Hate” is a very close brother of Revenge‘s “Unholy,” and he always keeps at least one foot firmly planted in his usual hard rock mode on tracks like “Seduction of the Innocent” and “I Confess.”

On the other hand Stanley, despite his reservations, dives in headfirst. “Rain” and “It Never Goes Away” are big downcast Sabbathy riff-fests straight out of Soundgarden’s playbook, completely devoid of love guns or anybody getting licked.

There’s nothing wrong with those Stanley songs on paper, but it doesn’t seem like the most natural fit. Hearing him be so self-serious about weather or an identity crisis or whatever he’s going on about here might be what I sound like to my kids when I try to use “cringe” or “cooked” in normal conversation: “How do you do, fellow kids?”

He does much better by bringing his more normal voice, energy and sense of dynamics to more upbeat songs such as “Master and Slave” and the nearly seven-minute “Jungle,” both of which use big thumping bass lines to good effect.

The album’s lone acoustic ballad, “I Will Be There” is lovely even if it somehow oddly seems like it would fit ever better (both for sound and lyrics) on Music From ‘The Elder.’ 

Except for the muddy sonics, Simmons’ brooding power ballad “Childhood’s End” would sound right at home on Destroyer. It also finds him copying Sting’s playbook by slipping lyrics from “God of Thunder” into the choruses near the end.

Carnival‘s darker, heavier setting proves to be a perfect fit for drummer Eric Singer and lead guitarist Bruce Kulick. The latter shines throughout, particularly on Simmons’ metallic and downright nasty “In My Head.” Kulick also gets to show off his lead vocal chops on the epic album closer “I Walk Alone.”

All in all, Kiss goes the full 10 rounds with grunge and ends up with a tie, as the grunge trappings work about as often as they don’t. Carnival of Souls is a bit uneven and takes a dip in quality on the second side, but that’s true of all but the best of the band’s non-makeup era releases.

Read More: The Album After Grunge: How 16 Bands Changed Their Sound

Not that many people got to hear it. Two months after they completed recording Carnival of Souls, Stanley and Simmons reunited with original Kiss members Ace Frehley and Peter Criss for a series of highly successful tours complete with their famous makeup and explosive stage show.

Carnival was shelved for nearly two years before being unceremoniously dumped into the marketplace, with a simple in-studio snapshot taking the place of the band’s usual high-impact cover art.

The album lives on mostly as the subject of “What If….?”-type conversations with hardcore fans. In an alternate timeline, it would have been very interesting to see what would have happened if the Revenge-era lineup had toured and promoted this album free from the shadow of the original lineup reunion.