Former KISS guitarist Bruce Kulick recently joined in for an interview with VRP Rocks and talked about the band’s ‘worst’ and darker album, ‘Carnival of Souls.’
Bruce Kulick opens up on KISS album
Kulick opened up on the album and should have gotten more appreciation from fans.
“The band was kind of confused, ‘Well, let’s make a darker and meaner KISS album.’ Paul got a bit disillusioned, didn’t really care for that stuff that much, but when it was needed for him to come up with a riff he writes ‘Master & Slave,’ a lot of the riffs in that and dialed it in. I co-write nine, I did nine songs, but that’s just because I locked myself in my room, drum machine, guitars, ideas, vibes, and just recorded everything and brought them to both of them.”
Paul Stanley didn’t seem to like the record much. However, he went on with it anyway: “We already worked on stuff so then it was just, ‘How can I warm Paul up to this kind of edgier, darker KISS and it worked. I know it’s not it’s a record that he’s not proud of yet for some fans they love it. So he’s entitled to that opinion of course, but I look back at ‘Carnival Of Souls’ and I just wish it was mixed a little differently but I’m still proud of it. I had my one vocal performance ‘I Walk Alone’ which was very prophetic at the time, but it’s a record that got so screwed.”
A couple of years ago, Kulick shared how the band’s music evolved during that time, embracing drop-D tuning and heavier sounds, and releasing ‘Carnival of Souls.’
“I feel that music was really changing at the time, and it was getting darker and grungier. We know this, and I think that Gene was really embracing that stuff quite a bit. He liked some of that darkness that some of those bands had. He was attracted to the drop-D tuning and all those things, but Paul was not so sure. He was not a big fan of flannel shirts and all that. So when we started to work on songs and this had nothing to do with the Reunion Tour, Gene was the one that was really writing and being creative and working on stuff, and I worked a lot with Gene. Eric [Singer] would be involved, and we would jam in these kinds of funky studios and come out of there with ideas. Some actually did make it to ‘Carnival of Souls,’ and some wound up on ‘Psycho Circus’ like ‘Within.’”
The album’s recording was interrupted by the Reunion Tour and MTV Unplugged, but Kulick remained heavily involved in the songwriting process, contributing nine co-writes to the album.
