Kiss - Carnival of Souls: The Final Sessions
On October 28, 1997, "Carnival of Souls: The Final Sessions", the seventeenth studio album by the band "Kiss", was released.
In the mid-1990s, American rock and roll giants "Kiss" found themselves at a more complex and historic crossroads than ever before. After regaining professional respect and heavy relevance with the 1992 Bob Ezrin-produced Revenge, an album that first introduced powerful drummer Eric Singer as a replacement for the late Eric Carr alongside virtuoso guitarist Bruce Kulick, the quartet continued to document its stage power with the 1993 live album Alive III. But the musical world around them had changed beyond recognition. Seattle's grunge revolution and alternative metal dominated the charts and MTV, and even Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons' Great Circus Show had trouble filling stadiums in the United States as it had in the past.
In 1995, the band decided to embark on an intimate and unique convention tour for die-hard fans, performing acoustic sets and answering questions from the audience. The huge success of those sessions led to the recording of the historic "MTV Unplugged" show in August 1995, where original members Ace Frehley and Peter Criss took the stage in a surprise joint performance that ignited a fire in the field. But even before the reunion of the original lineup with the famous makeup was finally formed, Paul Stanley, Gene Simmons, Bruce Kulick and Eric Singer locked themselves away between November 1995 and February 1996 at Music Grinder Studios in Hollywood, California, to record a bold new studio album initially codenamed "Head."
To lead the musical transformation, Simmons and Stanley recruited producer and sound engineer Toby Wright, the man behind the console on Alice in Chains' dark masterpieces, including 1994's Jar of Flies and the band's eponymous third album from 1995. The vision was unprecedented in "Kiss" history, a complete abandonment of the party anthems, the sparkling choruses and the light sexual innuendos in favor of a dark, heavy, low-key grunge and alternative metal sound, loaded with dark lyrics about alienation, guilt, addiction and naked self-examination.
The one who shone in all his glory within this new and dense musical envelope was guitarist Bruce Kulick, who took a central part in composing nine of the album's twelve songs and even recorded the bass guitar himself on half of the album's tracks, all the songs in which Stanley sang and his own closing song. Alongside him, Eric Singer provided a tremendous, dry, heavy and groovy drumming display that gave the songs an unparalleled modern and powerful backbone.
But shortly after the mixes were completed in early 1996, commercial reality intervened. The huge financial offer to reunite the original "Kiss" lineup with the makeup and costumes led Stanley and Simmons to inform Kulik and Singer that they were freezing their joint activities and putting the finished album in a drawer. Word of the hidden and dark "Kiss" album spread like wildfire, and pirated copies that leaked from the studio under the name "Carnival of Souls" made it one of the most smuggled and sought-after albums in the rock world of the nineties, which finally forced the record company Mercury Records to officially release it in October 1997 under the full name "Carnival of Souls: The Final Sessions", with a length of sixty minutes and eleven seconds, making it the longest studio album in the band's history.
The album opens with a dark, aggressive hammer blow with "Hate", a song written by Gene Simmons with Kulik and Scott Van Zen. From the distorted opening sounds and the heavy riff that recalls a modern-day "Black Sabbath," it's clear that this is not the familiar "Kiss"." Simmons spits the lyrics in a menacing, rough, almost industrial voice over Singer's hypnotic rhythm and Kulik's squeaky, spiky guitar solo that immediately sets the claustrophobic tone of the entire piece.
It's followed by "Rain," written by [Paul Stanley](https://en.faceoffrockshow.com/post/paul-stanley-1), Kulik, and producer/writer Curtis Cuomo. The song is based on a heavy, low-pitched guitar riff in the vein of "Soundgarden," with Kulik also leading the dense bass guitar and Stanley stretching his vocal cords to rough, painful territory. The heavy line continues on "Master & Slave," where the same writing team creates a dark, twisting groove that deals with relationships of control and dependence, with Singer's brilliant drum work that navigates between quiet, tense verses and an explosive chorus.
One of the album's most captivating gems is "Childhood's End," a song Simmons co-wrote with Kulik and Tommy Thayer, who later became the band's permanent guitarist as the Spaceman. The song, which borrows its name from Arthur C. Clarke's classic science fiction novel and was called "Tell Me" on early bootleg versions, combines a dominant bass line and a hauntingly somber yet catchy melody with a dramatic children's choir featuring Simmons' young son, Nick Simmons. Stanley follows up with the gentle, stripped-down acoustic ballad "I Will Be There," written for his son Evan and featuring a moving string arrangement, twelve-string guitar, ukulele, and a beautiful acoustic solo by Kulik on a 1963 Gibson.
At the center of the album is the only single released from it and the most epic piece of the work, "Jungle", which spans nearly seven minutes. The song, written by Stanley, Kulik and Cuomo, is a powerful display of mesmerizing Seattle groove, rolling riffs and Stanley's powerful vocals that prove that even in a dark alternative sound, he remains one of the most charismatic frontmen in rock. Although the band and record company never filmed a music video for the song and never performed it live, it conquered radio stations in the United States, reached number eight on the Billboard Mainstream Rock chart and was named Metal Edge Magazine's Readers' Song of the Year for 1997.
The second half of the album delves even deeper into psychedelic and dark experimentation. "In My Head," co-written by Simmons with Scott Van Zen and former Black 'N Blue frontman Jaime St. James, presents a hallucinatory, almost claustrophobic atmosphere with Kulik playing all the strings, followed by Stanley, Kulik and Cuomo's dark, slow "It Never Goes Away," which echoes the doom metal of "Black Sabbath" and displays a sharp dynamic between menacing whispers and cries of despair.
On "Seduction of the Innocent," which takes its name from the famous 1950s comic book that attacked the influence of popular culture on youth, Simmons combines an oriental and psychedelic atmosphere reminiscent of a heavy metal version of The Beatles' "Tomorrow Never Knows," with Kulik using a rare 1976 B.C. Rich Seagull guitar to create a mesmerizing sound. It's followed by "I Confess," written by Simmons with Christian rock artist Ken Tamplin, in which Simmons takes on the role of a hypocritical, corrupt religious preacher confessing his sins in front of a mirror, in a dramatic transition from quiet verses accompanied by string instruments to a heavy, crushing chorus.
Before closing, Stanley brings back the fast energy on "In the Mirror", a sharp, frenetic and kicking rock song that sounds like a bridge between the classic "Love Gun" days and the rough sound of the nineties. Then comes the emotional and historic closing chord of the album and an entire era in the band's history, "I Walk Alone". In this melancholic and beautiful ballad, co-written by Kulick and Simmons, Bruce Kulick steps up to the microphone and performs the lead vocal for the first and only time in his twelve years with "Kiss". With a sincere, vulnerable and touching voice, which merges towards the end with Simmons' deep background voices and is capped by a moving guitar solo, Kulick bids farewell to the band he faithfully led throughout the eighties and nineties.
The album's minimalist, somber cover also reflected the unusual circumstances of its birth. Instead of the flashy graphic productions that had accompanied the band in the past, the cover featured a serious, rugged black-and-white photograph of the four band members, without makeup or smiles, surrounded by a simple white frame that looked almost like an official underground release. Although "Carnival of Souls: The Final Sessions" was completely ignored by the band at the time, who preferred to promote the lucrative reunion tour and the album "Psycho Circus" released a year later, the test of time has made it a cult favorite among the band's fans and fans of 1990s heavy rock, a brave and unique testament to "Kiss"'s ability to shed all masks and create a heavy, exposed, and uncompromising album.
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