Album Review: The End Machine - Phase2

At this point in time, we have many examples of bands where there are two concurrent versions out there confusing the market, all because the people involved see more money in using the established name. We also have a few cases where the majority of a band has broken away from one problematic member to continue on doing the same thing under a different name. All of this makes it hard to keep track of who is who in what version under what name, and I'll be honest and say the endless permutations of the same people has really started to get old. Speaking of old, The End Machine was everyone from Dokken who wasn't Don Dokken, plus the current singer of Warrant. Does that really sound appealing to anyone under the age of 45?

Their first album was a bait-and-switch, where the first single had me excited, even though I've never given a damn about anything any of them have ever done. It was a great track, and when I sat down to listen to the rest of the album, it was firmly boring. It wasn't bad, per se, but it also didn't sound for one second like an album put together by three guys who simply had to keep making music together because they loved doing so.

For album number two, they lose their drummer to retirement, and try to be even more Dokken-ish. I'm not sure whether I'm supposed to take that as them getting back to their roots and being themselves, or if it's an admission the first album didn't do as well with old Dokken fans as they were hoping it would.

The first track, and first single, "Blood And Money", gets us off to a very 80s start. It's up-tempo and energetic, but written in that 80s style where the chorus melody has little movement and hook to it. So many songs of that time were written with simple one line chants as the main hook, and it's a methodology I've never found to be that appealing. I think it would work in a sweaty club when you're half drunk and your voice blends with a couple hundred others, but it isn't very captivating on record.

What makes this even more frustrating is they write a song like "Dark Divide", which is everything I could want from them. It still sounds like it's from their era, but the melody and hook has so much more sing-along quality to it. It very much reminds me of "Alive Today", and both of those songs stand out like a sore thumb among the rest of the band's work. I wish they could hear what I do in those songs, because if they could put together a few more written in that style, I think they would be on their way to finding an identity as more than a continuation of Dokken.

Once again, The End Machine have made an album that reminds me of a Statler and Waldorf riff:

"It's not bad."

"Yeah. It's not good either."

There's nothing wrong with "Phase2", but there's also nothing compelling about it. Unless you are a devoted Dokken fan from back in the day, these songs are fighting to break free of a past I don't want to live in. Maybe you do, and they certainly do. I'm looking forward.