Go for Your Guns

After four records that were assisted by producers Malcolm Cecil and Robert Margouleff, the Isley Brothers decided to stay in the East Coast choosing to record at upstate New York's Bearsville Studios, not too far from the brothers' T-Neck label in neighboring New Jersey. The album was engineered by John Holbrook assisted by Tom Mark.[1] It was mixed at Media Sound in NYC with Holbrook as mix engineer.

The album also noted Ron Isley's growing transition into singing more ballads, though he still performed lead on some of the band's funkier recordings on the album. Though they had changed their location and had some minor changes during production, most of the direction of the album remained the same as it had for other albums, with stronger emphasis on rock music as evident in the songs "Climbing Up the Ladder" and "Livin' in the Life" than they had on previous albums.

Professional ratings

Review scores
Source	Rating
Allmusic	[2]
Christgau's Record Guide	B[3]
Pitchfork	8.7/10[4]

Released in 1977, the album became one of their longest-running chart successes on the album chart staying on the charts for 40 weeks and spawning several singles including "The Pride", "Livin' in the Life" and the ballad "Voyage to Atlantis" while the funk ballad "Footsteps in the Dark", which was never released as a single, became one of the brothers' most popular songs in their repertoire and would be sampled constantly, most famously by rapper Ice Cube in his hit, "It Was a Good Day". Selling over two million copies, the album eventually went double platinum and to number one on the R&B albums chart.