The infamous Kiss photos from the “Hotter Than Hell“ album cover session (1974)

The album was released in october of 1974 and featured a garish and colorful Japanese influenced artwork, and the back cover showed individual band shots taken by Norman Seeff at a wild party, and a composite of all four band members’ makeup designs. Everyone present at the session (with the exception of Simmons) was drunk for the entire photography session. Stanley was so drunk he had to be locked in his car. Ace Frehley’s image on the front cover is actually airbrushed, as a side of his face was injured in a car accident and was without makeup on half of his face at the time of the photo shoot. Gene Simmons: Norman Seeff was a very bright but strange guy who believed that photo session should be this other thing. So he would create a climate and bring down everybody and anybody. Girls who would blow you, anything that would happen just to get a sense of something. That session was one of the few times that I’ve seen Paul drunk. He was blitzed. There was a photo of him with a girl who had