Jimmy Kay and Alan Dixon from The Metal Voice recently interviewed Dokken, Lynch Mob guitarist George Lynch, who spoke about The End Machine‘s new album Phase 2 which was released April 9 2021 via Frontiers.
Lynch also spoke about Randy Rhoads and his time teaching at Musonia as well as an understanding they made.
Was the new The End Machine album supposed to sound similar to the Dokken sound?
“We set out to recreate the chemistry and mentality of the writing process and the compositional chemistry that Jeff (Pilson) and I had. So that is what we tried to recreate, not necessarily tried to plagiarize Dokken’s songs or sound but just being in that frame of mind. I think we did a good job on that. We decided on this record to go back and place more importance on the fundamentals like having the biggest hook as possible and most memorable sing a long hooks, easy to digest, with easy digestible tempos and structures and a tried true western music formula. We kind of went back to that with some other elements in there. Really what it comes down to is giving the majority of the people what they want and in some sense we are selling a product and it becomes more challenging for us in later years to recreate that people know and love about what we do or have done in the past. We are constantly hearing complaints from people saying, ok you are reinventing yourself you do all these other things what about the core thing that you are known for how come you don’t do that anymore? So we had to address that and it has been challenging, it’s hard to do. The hardest thing for me to do and I can speak for Jeff (Pilson) as well is to recreate something we were 35 years ago. Very difficult to do that I have tried before and not have succeeded where i have had better success reinventing myself “
Is the new album Phase 2 infused with different influences?
“Sure, it always has, Dokken wasn’t a pure thing either, Dokken was just a bunch of other influences. There was a whole lot of Judas Priest influence in Dokken and others you name it just about anything. Late 60’s music, 70’s and contemporary bands at the time that were influencing us. So we weren’t immune from the influences, Dokken is an amalgamation of all our influences and everything we create now is a continuation of that and Dokken is one of our influences, we have come full circle.”
Were you a student of Randy Rhoads or did you teach at Musoina (Rhoads music School) what was your connection to Randy Rhoads?
“I taught at Musonia. We (randy Rhoads) played shows together frequently, we rehearsed in the same rehearsal facility and shared the same rooms. We had a lot of opportunities to hang out, share licks, talked occasionally, we weren’t like friends or anything but we were in the same business and ran in the same circles and ran into each other all the time. I know that he appreciated my playing and liked my playing. He would bring people to see me frequently including his mom. We were both up for Ozzy. I was up for Ozzy on three different occasions and one of the times was when Randy got it over me and then the understanding was that between whichever one of us got it the other one would teach at Musoina. Well i got the consolation prize. Randy told his mom if anything ever happened with him that he would want me to fill in if possible (teaching) if i would be willing to, so I did. “
he End Machine is a project created, overseen and directed by Serafino Perugino President and A&R director of Frontiers Records.
THE END MACHINE are back with their sophomore album, “Phase2,” which follows on the heels of their well-received and successful self-titled debut album released in 2018. The End Machine features former classic lineup Dokken members George Lynch and Jeff Pilson with the awesome singer Robert Mason (Warrant, Lynch Mob) on lead vocals. Classic Dokken drummer Mick Brown handled drums on the first album, but is now retired, so in his place behind the drum kit is none other than his brother Steve Brown.
The new record builds on the great bluesy hard rock music of the debut, but sees the band move more towards the classic Dokken sound and the result is a 2.0 reboot of a killer music machine!
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