Gene Simmons recently picked his best and worst albums for Classic Rock’s ‘The Soundtrack of My Life’ bit. He pointed out two albums from KISS’s catalog as their ‘most dishonest’ works.
“‘Music from ‘The Elder.’’ I take the blame for it, because it was my idea,” the bassist said. “I remember telling [producer] Bob Ezrin that I was writing a movie script, we were making a concept album based on that, and he said: ‘Let’s do our own ‘Tommy!’’ I said: ‘Yeah. If The Who can do it, why can’t we?’ Well, the straight answer is because we’re not The Who!”
He then added, “There are some fans who love that record. To me it was dishonest. But really, the most dishonest record we ever made was ‘Carnival of Souls,’ when we were trying to follow a trend instead of just being ourselves.”
‘Music from ‘The Elder’’ came out in November 1981 and received mixed reviews. By the following year, the album had turned into a commercial failure, but it started to receive occasional praise in recent years.
KISS continued to make music in their usual style until the mid-90s when they decided to switch to a darker sound. The band released a grunge-inspired record, ‘Carnival of Souls,’ in 1997.
Paul Stanley admitted in his 2001 book, ‘KISS: Behind the Mask,’ that he did not want to make that album. “I was dead-set against doing that kind of an album,” the vocalist wrote. “I never believed the world needs a second-rate Soundgarden, Metallica or Alice in Chains.”
Though ‘Carnival of Souls’ reached No. 27 on the US Billboard 200 chart after its release, it did not achieve the same level of success as other KISS albums. Some described it as the band’s worst work.