Frontiers Music [Release date 09.03.21]
This second The End Machine album, Phase 2, does what it would’ve said if it had been in a tin. And it says it emphatically, loudly, subtly in places and outright aggressively in others.
It’s Dokken restored, with a few new pieces precision fitted into this long running machine. Robert (Lynch Mob) Mason on vocals and drummer Pete (brother of Mick) Brown join cornerstones George Lynch and Jeff Pilson. Their four man, oiled up End Machine speeds along the rock’nroll highway with purpose and direction.
The bluesy hard rock from the first album reappears in places. The weighty ‘We Walk Alone’ and the smouldering ‘Dark Divide’ have enough grit and attitude to raise the stakes on these commercially inclined melodramas, without sounding overtly cliched or derivative to the genre’s core audience.
When you hear ‘Crack The Sky’ and ‘Plastic Heroes’, you realise that these guys have been in each other’s company for so long that they must by now have developed some kind of musical telepathy.
These are dark, passionate songs, loudly echoing the best selling music of their parent band’s eighties’ zenith. In a way it’s a relief that they’re not searching vainly for a new kind of authenticity. These tracks, and others, ‘Born Of Fire’, ‘Prison Or Paradise’ and maybe ‘Scars’ too, sound closely calibrated to past musical metrics. And that’s a good thing. It sounds natural, unforced, punchy and powerful. The medium paced, bittersweet stuff was always their forte.
And yes, it’s edgy in places, it’s aggressive at times and it’s uniformly loud, but it’s got the huge heart and soul of all good rock music. And you’ve got to work hard to make it sound this effortless. ****
Review by Brian McGowan
Featured Artist: JOSH TAERK
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Power Plays w/c 9 December 2024
In this sequence we play ‘The Best of 2024′ GRTR! reviewer selections
Featured Albums w/c 9 December 2024
09:00-12:00 The Best of 2024 (Melodic Rock)
12:00-13:00 The Best of 2003-2024 (Melodic Hard Rock)
14:00-16:00 The Best of 2024 (Singer Songwriter)
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