Wild Ride – Tension & Desire 1993

Year 1993 was a bad year for classic rock as grunge swept off many bands from the board but WILD RIDE was among the survivors of melodic hard rock and I’m glad they made ‘Tension and Desire’, which even though not many remember or know this band, this little historical piece has special place in many fans heart.

The opening tune, ‘If You Don’t Want My Love’ is beautiful yet heavy and definitely among the best track here. Together with ‘This Time’ which is a flawless and the greatest song they ever made and also the awesome closing power ballad, ‘Stop The Fighting’, made this album worth the purchase. Another brilliant songs they crafted here are ‘Steal My Heart’, what a splendid chorus!, the anthemic and another hard-hitting song, ‘Too Late To Stop’, and also the uptempo tune, ‘Don’t Save Your Life’, with an excellent riffs.

The production skills of Okkie Huysdens (The President, Diesel), ensures this band gets the attention of those with a liking for heavy guitar/keyboard based melodic rock. A couple of Wild Ride’s personnel came from fellow Dutch band Hot Legs (Pieters and Van Deer Linden), the latter was also part of another Dutch outfit Vangouw, who it seems will be having their material released by AOR-FM Records during 2009! For the most part, this album literally smokes! The intensity is there all the way with no slacking off the accelerator..

For fans of 1st Avenue, Terra Nova and Zinatra, these guys might appear to be copy-cats, but I think their guitar power is more significant, courtesy of six-string bender Yuri Florentinus. The melodic attack surges forth with the pairing of ‘Fool Fool’ and ‘This Time’. ‘Out Of My Dreams’ is a mid paced chant-a-minute effort, where a band like Great White meets Def Leppard. Classy stuff.

01. If You Don’t Want My Love
02. Where Do We Go
03. Steal My Heart
04. Love Will Find Its Way
05. Fool Fool
06. This Time
07. Too Late To Stop
08. Out Of My Dreams
09. Tell No Lies
10. Don’t Save Your Love
11. Stop The Fighting

Fred Pieters – vocals
Toine Van Der Linden – bass, backing vocals
Jan Hartman – drums
Yuri Florentinus – guitar, backing vocals

Okkie Huysdens – backing vocals
Val Roberts – keyboards
Don Van Spall – 12 string guitar, backing vocals on “Out of My Dreams”
Jan Koster – tambourine, backing vocals on “Out of My Dreams”
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