Management rushed them into the studio where the boys would spend the next fourteen days writing and recording a new album that would never see the light of day. Now affectionately known as "the lost basement tape", it was intended to show the Collins group that Teeze was more than a one shot flash in the pan. The songs were good. The quality of the recording was not. A number of those songs such as "Sleaze Patrol" and "Lock Up Your Daughters" were already familiar to fans lucky enough to catch the live shows in late ‘85/early 1986. Other songs on the demo (including "I Can’t Live Without Your Love", "King Of The Night", "Keep On Rockin’" and "Keep The Fire Burnin") were only "pre-viewed" at a handful of live shows and are now considered to be the group’s rarest studio work (and also the final studio recordings featuring the classic Teeze lineup of Rivera, Malack, Weakley, Kevin & Brian Stover). Despite that, a meeting was arranged with Collins when Aerosmith appeared at the Spectrum in Philadelphia. Unfortunately, he decided against getting involved and the boys were now faced with deciding in what direction to pursue.

What had shown incredible momentum and promise in 1985 had now suddenly come to a standstill. Tensions were high, tempers short, frustration was setting in. Some of the members wanted to pull the group off the road for an extended period in order to write and record. Others wanted to continue the heavy gig schedule hoping that their amazing live shows would eventually land a major label deal. The band fractured along those opinion lines and Kevin and Brian Stover would leave the group shortly thereafter. Even though Teeze was now facing a dire situation with no record in the stores, having to advertise for new members and being short of cash due to the ongoing battle with Greenworld, they never considered quitting.

The call went out for drummers and guitarists. Hundreds replied from around the world. Veteran skin basher Mike Natalini, from Norristown, PA., would be the new drummer. Mike's style, chops, experience and personality were a perfect fit for the group. Finding the right lead guitar player proved much more difficult until one special audition package was pulled from the pile. In it was a cheap cassette, a color snapshot and a short letter. The photo showed a guy holding a rather large knife to his own throat and the letter said something like "this is what I'm gonna do to myself if you don't hire me". So it was decided that this was either a brilliantly creative musician who instinctively knew how to market himself or some psycho who deserved an audition based on his darker side. Either way, the audition was arranged and Rex, from upstate Pennsylvania, was the new Teeze guitarist.

Rehearsals were begun and the group completed the re-building process with new concerts and club appearances in the summer of 1986. A new demo was finally recorded and the major label shopping process was started again. This time the shopping yielded results when a well-respected music attorney by the name of Paul Schindler called from New York in the fall of that year expressing interest in the tape. Once again the boys were in the thick of it. Schindler was instrumental in opening doors that our favorite metal band from Philly was never able to get through on its own.

Securing a major management firm was first on the list. While several firms expressed interest, the boys decided on New York's Champion Entertainment. Champion was run by industry veteran Tommy Mottola and boasted a client roster that included one of the most successful rock acts of all time, namely Hall & Oates as well as John Cougar Mellencamp. Champion in turn took the Teeze demo and shopped the majors, landing a multi-album deal with Columbia Records in January 1987. Tommy Mottola subsequently left Champion in April to take over as the new CEO of CBS (an unexpected move that at the time was thought to be an ace-in-the-hole for Teeze). This move would prove to be a significant event in Teeze's career, the ramifications of which wouldn't be fully understood until much later.

When Teeze signed with Champion and Columbia, one of the key components of the seven album deal was a clause giving them "creative control" of the final project. This initially appeared to be a great perk that was rarely offered to a new band, but it soon developed into a deep rift between the band and Champion when Teeze started making decisions that didn’t necessarily follow management’s direction.

One of those decisions occurred soon after the group’s 1987 signing with CBS when Zomba Music Publishing offered Teeze a publishing deal. Zomba was one of the major players in the publishing business and was in a position to earn the group additional money by licensing songs for movie soundtracks, television, etc. The Zomba deal offered a $60,000 advance for the exclusive rights to the group’s entire catalog (including songs that appeared on the Teeze album). In return, Teeze would receive the "standard" 50/50 publishing split for all publishing royalties. The group had other ideas in mind however. Realizing that they might never re-coup on their recording costs and thereby see any royalties from album and CD sales if the project stiffed, they knew they would receive publishing royalties from every copy sold if they kept control of it themselves. This business decision would prove to be a prophetic one in the long run, but for the short term only served to alienate their New York management firm who saw the offer as a quick influx of cash.

A number of notable producers (including Eddie Kramer and Jimmy Iovine) expressed interest in working with Teeze, but it would be Max Norman , famed for his work with Loudness and Ozzy Osbourne, that got the nod to helm the second album. Recording commenced in the winter of 1988 at Long View Farms in Massachusetts. The basic rhythm tracks were completed in February 1988 during one of the coldest Massachusetts winters in memory.

During the Long View sessions, Teeze recorded a Bon Jovi song called "Rage Of Angels" at the request of producer Max Norman. The song was basically a re-write of "You Give Love A Bad Name" and Norman figured it would be a sure-fire hit. The song was quickly abandoned when it soon became apparent that it sounded too much like Bon Jovi. Meanwhile, the frigid temperatures were wreaking havoc on the guitars by warping one guitar neck after the other and finally forced the group to leave Long View with only bass and drum tracks in hand. It was on the plane trip home that management would inform bassist Dave Weakley that his father had suffered a near-fatal heart attack two weeks earlier.