There are records that arrive at exactly the wrong fucking moment. Bangalore Choir’s “On Target” is another record to add to those lists.
Released by Giant Records in 1992, “On Target” had the voice of a former Accept frontman, two guitarists carrying the DNA of an obscure but excellent 1980s hard-rock band, a rhythm section that had already come through another major-label act, production from Max Norman, and songs connected to people such as Jon Bon Jovi, Aldo Nova and Steve Plunkett.
This was a band assembled from musicians who had already spent years trying to make it.
Because the story of “On Target” isn’t really “here’s another forgotten hair-metal album.”
It’s the story of what happens when talented, experienced musicians get another shot and the world changes just as they’re taking it.
The lineage is the story. Start with David Reece.
Before Bangalore Choir, Reece had already won the musical lottery and discovered that winning the lottery doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve won.
He became the American singer chosen to replace Udo Dirkschneider in Accept and recorded “Eat the Heat” in 1989.
But “Eat the Heat” became controversial, the Accept experiment ended, and Reece returned to Los Angeles.
Instead of giving up, he started again. And Reece didn’t simply recruit random musicians.
He found John Kirk through the Guitar Institute of Technology in Hollywood. Kirk had previously played with Curt Mitchell in Reno band Razormaid. Mitchell joined.
That’s already a hell of a musical family tree. Then came Ian Mayo and Jackie Ramos.
Both had been members of Hericane Alice, the Atlantic Records band that released “Tear the House Down” in 1990.
Bangalore Choir’s management had also managed Hericane Alice, and the opportunity came almost immediately after Hericane Alice had been dropped.
So look at what you’re actually hearing:
David Reece — Accept
Curt Mitchell — Razormaid
John Kirk — Razormaid
Ian Mayo — Hericane Alice
Jackie Ramos — Hericane Alice
It’s absolutely a supergroup of experience.
And, more importantly, these weren’t musicians getting their first taste of the business.
They had already been through it.
The really strange thing about “On Target” is how much machinery was behind it.
Bangalore Choir played only a handful of Los Angeles shows before major-label interest arrived. Reece later recalled via the metalforcesmagazine.com that after around nine shows, the band had offers from labels around the city. Giant Records, distributed through Warner Bros., won the race.
Then Giant brought in Max Norman to produce. His résumé already included Ozzy Osbourne, Megadeth, Lynch Mob, Savatage and others.
The album also had Jon Bon Jovi and Aldo Nova connections on “Doin’ the Dance,” while “Loaded Gun” had Ricky Phillips among its co-writers.
And yet the album didn’t explode.
That’s the great paradox. The band had the musicians. The singer. The songs. The producer. The label. The industry connections. The look.
The timing should have worked. Except the timing didn’t.
And we are back to the seismic moment of 1991–92, when the musical ground underneath hard rock was moving.
Nirvana had detonated. Pearl Jam were exploding. Soundgarden were breaking through.
And then the record industry did what the record industry always does when it discovers something that sells.
It copied it.
The same machine that had saturated the Sunset Strip with interchangeable hair-metal bands now turned toward Seattle. Suddenly everyone wanted flannel, distortion, alienation and authenticity.
MTV changed.
Radio changed.
Labels changed.
The irony is that the industry eventually did to Seattle what it had done to the Sunset Strip: saturate the market with bands trying to reproduce the sound of the bands that broke through, until the movement itself became exhausted.
Bangalore Choir weren’t suddenly bad.
The market had stopped asking for what they were selling.
And that’s the brutal part of making it in music.
Music is a supply and demand economy. Talent isn’t enough. Hard work isn’t enough. Experience isn’t enough. You can spend ten years building something only to discover that the market has moved somewhere else.
Bangalore Choir got their opportunity. They just got it at the end of an era.
“Angel in Black”
And what a way to open the record.
“Angel in Black” immediately tells you what Bangalore Choir are.
Big guitars. Big vocal. Big chorus. Big fucking attitude. It’s melodic hard rock without apologising for the “rock” part.
Reece sounds enormous. There’s swagger and melodic freedom here.
There’s something familiar buried in the main riff too. It reminds me of the riff that comes after the chorus in Alice Cooper’s “Snakebite.”
The song had an interesting history too: it was originally associated with Autograph, with Steve Plunkett credited as its writer along with Jack Conrad. Their demo version was released on an Autograph anthology release.
“Loaded Gun”
An overused song title in the 70s and 80s. However this is the commercial punch.
It’s got some serious songwriting lineage around it. Written by Curtis Cuomo, Harry Paress and Rick Phillips.
Phillips is coming from a pedigree that involves “The Baby’s” and “Bad English”. He’s hardened and been around. Paress already had success writing for Vixen, including “Love Is a Killer.” He would go on to write songs for Fiona, Quiet Riot, Bobby Kimball and Steelhouse Lane. And then there is Curtis Cuomo. His name would later become much more recognisable when he appeared as a co-writer on “Psycho Circus” with Paul Stanley, plus on all the Paul Stanley sung tracks on the “Carnival of Souls” album.
So if “Angel in Black” introduces the band, “Loaded Gun” is the song designed to make the radio understand them.
It’s hooky, muscular and built around the kind of chorus that could have lived comfortably alongside late-80s Bon Jovi, Whitesnake or Def Leppard.
The song was pushed as a single and received trade promotion from Giant Records. The music video has since become a piece of pop-culture trivia because a very young Jared Leto appeared in it.
“If the Good Die Young (We’ll Live Forever)”
It’s one of those songs where the title sounds like something you’ve heard a hundred times, but the band sells it because the melody is stronger than the cliché.
“Doin’ the Dance”
This is one of the album’s most interesting tracks because of the songwriting pedigree.
Jon Bon Jovi and Aldo Nova are involved in the writing.
There’s groove. There’s melody. There’s attitude.
But it’s not their best track. It’s competent, commercial and perfectly engineered for the moment, but compared with “Angel in Black” and “Loaded Gun,” it doesn’t hit with the same force.
“Hold On to You”
The inevitable ballad. Co written by the band with Russell Miller.
The guitars become atmosphere rather than artillery, and the song provides the album with some breathing room.
“All or Nothin’”
This is one of the songs that reveals the band’s confidence.
It was one of the earliest songs written by the developing Bangalore Choir lineup, along with “Slippin’ Away.”
And you can hear that it isn’t trying to impress anybody.
It’s simply a band discovering its identity.
The riff is direct. The chorus is huge. The rhythm section drives rather than decorates.
And Reece attacks the vocal like a man who knows he has something to prove.
Which, frankly, he did.
“Slippin’ Away”
It’s a great piece of melodic rock. And the title is prophetic. Because things just slip away.
Eras. Youth. Relationships. Opportunities. And the musical culture that had created the conditions for Bangalore Choir to exist.
Reece has said via SleazeRoxx that decades later, “Slippin’ Away” remains one of the Bangalore Choir songs audiences know and sing along to.
That’s the ultimate vindication.
The industry may have forgotten the album. The audience didn’t.
It just took them longer to find it.
“She Can’t Stop”
An AOR gem about a lonely girl dancing under neon lights who can’t stop running away.
“Freight Train Rollin’”
This is one of the album’s hardest hitters. A great riff to kick it off.
The title tells you everything.
It’s movement. Momentum. Power. And the song doesn’t mess around.
I love the groove around the verse riffs. The simplicity is deceptive. Getting stuff to sound effortless is difficult.
“Just One Night”
And then the album closes.
“Just One Night” isn’t the biggest song here, and that’s probably why it works as the closer.
After all the swagger, sex, guitars and huge choruses, the record finishes without trying to manufacture some grand finale.
It’s simply another strong melodic hard-rock song.
And then it’s over.
Thirty-eight minutes.
Ten songs.
No filler marathon.
No desperate attempt to prove they’re the next Metallica.
Just a fucking good hard-rock album.
And then reality arrived.
Bangalore Choir had done everything right.
They had paid their dues. They had experienced musicians. They had a respected producer. They had a major-label deal. They had songs. They had management.
And still…
Nothing.
There’s a tendency to look back at bands like Bangalore Choir and think: “These guys just appeared, made an album and disappeared.”
No. That’s completely wrong. The musicians had been grinding for years.
Razormaid had been around since the early 1980s before “First Cutt” arrived in 1987.
Hericane Alice had spent years developing before Atlantic released “Tear the House Down.”
Reece had already gone through the extraordinary experience of joining Accept and recording a major-label album.
Mayo and Ramos had already experienced the major-label dream, and the pain of being dropped.
By the time these musicians stood together as Bangalore Choir, they weren’t beginners.
They were survivors.
You’re listening to musicians who had already learned how fucking hard it was.
And looking at where these five musicians went afterwards only strengthens the argument.
Mayo and Ramos moved into Bad Moon Rising, connecting them to Kal Swan and Doug Aldrich of Lion.
Jerry Best’s parallel Lion/Freak of Nature/Dio story eventually connects the same ecosystem to Mike Tramp, Dio and even Courtney Love.
Reece would go on to Sircle of Silence, Bonfire, Gypsy Rose and his solo work, eventually returning to Bangalore Choir decades later.
Mitchell and Reece would eventually revive Bangalore Choir.
The family tree keeps growing.
Here’s the beautiful part. The album didn’t disappear. It went underground. Collectors found it.
Hard-rock fans rediscovered it. CDs changed hands. People bought it on eBay years after its release.
And eventually a younger generation started hearing it without any of the baggage attached to 1992.
That’s the funny thing about music.
Sometimes the audience you were chasing isn’t the audience that eventually saves you.
“On Target” isn’t a lost masterpiece because it reinvented hard rock.
It’s a lost classic because it executed the genre extraordinarily well at exactly the wrong moment.
The guitars sound enormous. The vocals are killer. The songs are melodic without becoming soft. The production has the pedigree. The musicians had the experience.
And the album has something a lot of technically impressive records don’t: personality.
Could On Target have been a major commercial hard-rock record in 1987, 1988 or even 1989?
Absolutely.
But in 1992?
That’s the tragedy. The machine changed what it wanted.
That’s timing. And sometimes timing is the difference between a band everybody knows and a band people spend 30 years telling other people they should know.
Because Bangalore Choir didn’t miss because they weren’t good enough.
They missed because the target moved.
destroyerofharmony 