Animalize Album - Under The Gun

According to Eric, “I had nothing to do with the song after the initial rhythm thing. What happened was Paul and I, I think at rehearsal or on a day off, went in the studio. I just started playing a double-bass beat, I heard some accents in my head. I said: ‘Paul, why don’t you play these three chords...’ I think it’s like D – A – D – A – D – A... We started fooling around with that and we liked it. And then we didn’t go anywhere else with it. Paul remembered that part and wrote ‘Under The Gun’” (KISS Neon Glow #1, 1992). Eric would get some of his most noticeable backing vocals on this recording, hollering out “Fire!” during the bridge. Jean Beauvoir plays the machine-gun bass on the recording.

An alleged demo of this song (with full vocals) runs 25 seconds shorter than the album version this is a result of it being speeded up. Once slowed back down to the album track’s length the recording is simply a very poor quality copy of that track. A full 4:00 rough mix of the song does ciculate. It’s essentially the final arrangement, with some basic lead work at the beginning of the song and the full guitar solo. Vocally, it only includes the “Under The Gun” chorus refrains and Eric shouting “Fire!”...

By the last week of May the basic music tracks for Paul's songs had essentially reached the point of completion. A 21 second clip with Mark’s raw solo overdub on the end of “Under The Gun” is nearly identical to the final version, though “raw” is a compliment to how this attempt sounds. It’s followed be 6 additional repetitions of the end of the song without any guitar overdubs. These have a different drum pattern to the album version of the song, with metronome-like timekeeping being present in the space where the ending guitar solo would be placed...