Dokken & Lynch Mob (and related bands)

If you haven't voted in Part 1, Round 40 of the Greatest Metal Song Cup yet, Dokken's "Kiss Of Death" is currently losing to Whitesnake's "Walking In The Shadows Of The Blues", and could use your help to avoid elimination! Voting ends in a little over 7 hours.

EDIT: It lost, unfortunately.
 
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blabbermouth.net

DON DOKKEN Says He Wrote DOKKEN's Hit Songs, Even Though They Were Credited To Entire Band

In a brand new interview with Justin Young of Monsters, Madness And Magic, Don Dokken was asked if he and his DOKKEN bandmates will continue performing live even though he has publicly stated that the group's recently released 13th studio album, "Heaven Comes Down", will be DOKKEN's last. He...
blabbermouth.net blabbermouth.net
Don Dokken: “I'm not throwing my old guys under the bus, but I was the main writer. I wrote the hits — 'In My Dreams' and 'It's Not Love' and 'Alone Again' and 'The Hunter'. Even though when you look at the record credits and it says 'Don Dokken, George Lynch, Jeff Pilson, Mick Brown,' they didn't write those songs. And everybody knows in my camp that I wrote the songs — the guitar and the lyrics. Those other three guys were in Orange County with an ounce of cocaine trying to come up some good songs. And that's why I couldn't write with them, because I don't do drugs. Never did.”

Yeah, sorry, I don’t buy it at all. Don’s first solo album doesn’t really sound much like Dokken, and the post-Lynch/Pilson Dokken records also don’t sound much like classic Dokken except when Jon Levin is aping George Lynch; and yet when Lynch and Pilson have written songs outside of Dokken you could always hear elements of the Dokken DNA in their work.
 
Sounds like the new End Machine album is titled The Quantum Phase and comes out on March 22.

Jeff Pilson is also a member of the new Revolution Saints line-up, and their album Against The Winds comes out on February 9.

Frontiers also mentioned a new Dirty Shirley album (Dino Jelusick and George Lynch) coming out in 2024, but I haven’t seen a name or a date yet.
 

First single from the new End Machine album, The Quantum Phase, which comes out on March 8th. Fuckin’ A, Girish sounds great and the song kicks ass!
 
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I guess the new End Machine album has already been sent to the music press, and this guy gave it a 9.5/10!:
metalplanetmusic.com

Album Review : The End Machine – The Quantum Phase

Third album for these guys and we have a change of personnel, with singer Robert Mason leaving and Joel Hoekstra's 13 singer Girish Pradhan taking over on the vocals, the rest of the group is Steve Brown on Drums, Jeff Pilson on bass and George Lynch on guitars, looking forward to this one, the last
metalplanetmusic.com metalplanetmusic.com
 
Jer said:
Tooth And Nail and Back For The Attack are both great. I might like Tooth And Nail a hair better because it’s a bit more consistent, though its production is worse. You can’t go wrong with either one, though.
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First four albums are awesome! My favourite is Under Lock And Key but yeah Tooth And Nail has some blistering tracks (the title track though). Back For Attack has more variety in songs. Do you like any of the later period albums? Haven't given them a listen...

Talking about associated bands, Don Dokken's solo album is also good (crazy lineup) and so is Lynch Mob's Wicked Sensation. Did not know Girish is in The End Machine. Homeboy has sure come a long way.
 
Siddharth said:
Do you like any of the later period albums? Haven't given them a listen...
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I like all of the Dokken albums with Lynch on them in their own way. Shadowlife is an oddball, but I think it’s actually a little underrated. It’s not a great “Dokken” album, but it’s an interesting album musically. Also, the single version of “I Feel” totally rips, unlike the plodding album version.

The last Dokken album that was any good was Erase The Slate from 1999. This was the classic line-up, but with Reb Beach swapped in for George Lynch, and it’s actually a great record. It’s probably the last time Don sounded good enough (though you can hear the strain creeping in), and “Voice Of The Soul” is a pretty killer track. After that album Jeff Pilson left and it essentially became a Don Dokken solo vehicle again.

If you like Erase The Slate, the Jeff Pilson / Reb Beach songwriting team reunited on two Black Swan albums in 2020 and 2022. Their second album, Generation Mind, is particularly great. Robin McAuley is the vocalist on those albums.

Siddharth said:
Talking about associated bands, Don Dokken's solo album is also good (crazy lineup)
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Not a fan, personally. I don’t think the songwriting holds up. Lynch and Pilson were the backbone of Dokken’s songwriting strength, IMO.

Don’s second solo album Solitary is more interesting to me because it’s more soft and glum, which actually works pretty well with his deteriorating voice.

Siddharth said:
and so is Lynch Mob's Wicked Sensation.
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Yep, great stuff, though Oni Logan’s vocal ad libs can be a bit annoying at times.

I wasn’t too keen on the second Lynch Mob album (self-titled) with Robert Mason on vocals at first, probably because of the Keith Olsen horn bullshit, but I’ve warmed to it over time. Never got into the later Lynch Mob stuff after Oni came back, though.

Siddharth said:
Did not know Girish is in The End Machine. Homeboy has sure come a long way.
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Yeah, that’s new with their upcoming third album. Sounds great.

If you want to sample some post-Dokken material, some of the best options are probably Black Swan’s Generation Mind, The End Machine’s Phase2, George Lynch’s Seamless, and Sweet & Lynch’s Only To Rise.

EDIT: Also Lynch/Pilson’s Wicked Underground…
 
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The new End Machine album is out, and after a couple of spins it’s sounding great. Lynch is on fire, and Pradhan’s a really good fit for the band, sounding a bit like Robert Mason at times, but also mixing up his timbre more, and he can hit and hold some killer high notes. This is darker and more aggressive than the previous album, but it’s still got good variety with some bluesier tracks and whatnot.

Unfortunately, Amazon got confused about the release date and still thinks it’s coming out on March 22nd, so no news on my CD shipping yet. Gotta listen on YouTube instead…
 
Siddharth said:
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I agree with roughly half of this.

I would never recommend Sacred Groove outside of the instrumentals (well, “Flesh And Blood” is OK). Heavy Hitters II is not an easy recommendation unless you’re in love with Bernard Fowler’s voice. Babylon didn’t really grab me at all. Slave To The Empire has a number of cool tracks, especially the title track, but half of it is subpar Dokken covers. And while Heart & Sacrifice is pretty good, it can’t hold a candle to the first Sweet & Lynch album, Only To Rise.

Absolutely criminal that he didn’t mention Seamless here, or Only To Rise. Orchestral Mayhem would also be worth a mention, as it’s almost entirely electric guitar covers of classical music, which is very different for Lynch. And on that note, Machine And Bone is another example of Lynch going way off the farm and doing something really interesting with it.
 
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