KISS’ detractors always say the band’s fortunes dipped when they removed their iconic make-up in 1983, but, really, that decade’s ever-changing trends and the new breed of hard rock stars such as Guns N’ Roses posed much bigger threats. Indeed, while they were rarely afraid of anyone, when KISS came to record 1989’s Hot In The Shade, they were well aware that they needed to record an album with the energy and edge of their 70s classics Destroyer and Love Gun.
Listen to Hot In The Shade on Apple Music and Spotify.
At their powerhouse best
At any rate, KISS were hardly on the ropes. Helped along by the UK Top 10 hit ‘Crazy Crazy Nights’, 1987’s radio-friendly Crazy Nights album was a significant transatlantic success, but it was atypically reliant on synthesisers, something its creators were keen to eradicate in their quest to make a truly sizzling, guitar-based rock’n’roll record.
To achieve this, KISS opted to self-produce Hot In The Shade. They also elected to overdub the demos they’d already recorded, rather than re-record the songs again when they decamped to The Fortress, the Hollywood studio complex in which they chose to shape the album during the summer of 1989.