Take This Ride

After their second (third?) long retirement, Moving Targets have reunited again with predictably great results. This is now their fourth raging guitar, heavy bass-and-drums, high-and-dry battering album, notable for Kenny Chambers' sense of sterling choruses and stellar verses to match that malicious edge his buzzing guitar has had since 1987's crushing Burning in Water. Not that Chambers and mates (bassist Pat Leonard and drummer J. Arcari) haven't progressed. In many ways, Take This Ride is their most interesting LP (if not their most aurally thrilling), precisely because of the more restrained tempos, giving the band more room to groove and Chambers more time to rip off steely leads for this harsh post-punk/post-hardcore roaring rock. Songs such as "Unwind" and "Right Way" find Chambers caressing his strings in a way he might not have considered in the Bands That Could Be God (compilation) era, with no diminishing of chops or drama. As they continue to improve, MTs' only crime is that in the wake of Seattle, there are too many lesser lights crowding this field, meaning this comet might slip through the horizon of oblivion. Every time I've seen 'em play they've been ignored (hot dog vendors have bigger draws), and that's just overtly unfair. As an on-again, off-again proposition, they don't help their own cause much; still, if better supported, maybe the obviously talented Chambers (who in the past has wasted his off-time as second banana with such metallic lemons as Bullet la Volta) would be tempted to stay the course. Deft, melodic aural attacks like this are not that common anymore! Or why are so many bands covering Mission of Burma and Hüsker Dü (MTs' closest benefactors) these days?