10 Obscure And Rare Hard Rock & Metal Albums

A definite curate’s egg of a record, Music From ‘The Elder’ has largely been ignored since its release in 1981 - by the band themselves, as well as fans and critics.

Their ninth album since their formation eight years earlier, Music From ‘The Elder’ was released during a time of significant upheaval. Founding member Peter Criss had left the previous year, and the pop-oriented sound of their previous album, Unmasked, had tanked with their audience. In response, Kiss returned to working with hitmaking producer Bob Ezrin, who had helped make 1976’s Destroyer such a hit. The rumour had it that the band were going back to basics again to rediscover their mojo - so absolutely no one expected what happened next.

A concept album acting as the soundtrack to a movie that didn’t exist (something to do with a boy being raised to fight evil by a secret society), Music From ‘The Elder’ featured medieval instruments, synthesisers and spoken word passages linking songs. The band recorded in total secrecy, Ezrin refusing to speak to anyone except for the three founding members of the band. However, this was Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley’s baby: guitarist Ace Frehley found himself regularly outvoted by the other two and, already angry over their decision to ditch writing a heavy rock record, refused to come into the studio and recorded all his guitar parts at home.

The band’s label and management heard the finished record at the same time, and didn’t react well - their business manager refused to allow his name to appear anywhere on the credits. The fans’ response was, predictably, worse than it had been for Unmasked. This was not what any of them had signed up for.

The eventual release of the album had the tracks in completely the wrong order to try to emphasise possible singles, and all of the narrative tracks telling the story were binned, making the concept of the album impossible to follow. Plans for a tour were abandoned. All promotional activity ceased. Frehley left the hand the following year, leaving Simmons and Stanley to recruit replacement members to continue.

Everyone involved has since admitted that Music From ‘The Elder’ was a colossal mistake: Simmons and Stanley have labelled it ‘delusional’, while Ezrin, in the throes of a serious cocaine addiction at the time, says his judgement was impaired. It’s the Kiss record that everyone would prefer to forget.