Metal, Hardcore, Indie, Rock
Paul Stanley has never held back when expressing his dislike of Kiss‘ 1980 album “Unmasked”, which was the band’s second and last album from their harshly criticized pop-disco period, as per UCR. It appears that he also despises the album’s cover image. Stanley and his longtime bandmate Gene Simmons talked about the “Unmasked” cover art in a video advertising Kiss‘ recently redesigned website, which enables fans to earn rare patches by completing various online tasks. The comic book-style cover, created by artist Victor Stabin, depicts a curious reporter attempting to take pictures of Kiss without their well-known onstage makeup, which the band actually went to considerable lengths to avoid in the 1970s.
When I saw the cover I said, ‘Hey I have to go on record and say this cover sucks’. Yeah, unfortunately, I thought, ‘ahh, that’s so cool.’ One of the panels in it [bottom center} had our faces in makeup, and we’re sort of pretending to take our faces off… but under [those} faces were the [the same] makeup faces. That became its own kind of iconic thing, I still like that one, maybe that could have been the cover.
American rock group Kiss‘s eighth studio album, “Unmasked”, was released by Casablanca Records on May 20, 1980. The album features a more pop-friendly sound with less disco influence, continuing the band’s break from hard rock. There are no songs featuring drummer and founding member Peter Criss, who was mostly absent during the previous “Dynasty” and only appeared on the song “Dirty Livin'”. Criss appears in the album’s artwork and is given credit for the “Shandi” music video, even though he was not involved in its production. With the unpleasant distinction of being the first non-platinum Kiss album since “Dressed to Kill” (1975), “Unmasked” is sometimes seen as a “flop” or at least a commercial letdown in comparison to the band’s prior success.
