Lynch Pilson - Wicked Underground

In general I get the impression that Wicked Underground is a very under appreciated and underrated album among most music fans except for a certain number of die-hard old school Dokken and George Lynch fans.

I'm not going to do a track-by-track breakdown of this album. Instead I'm going to report on my overall impression.

I didn't instantly warm up to Wicked Underground the first time I listened to it. But then that could be OR for you. Perhaps I was a bit overwhelmed by the music sounding a bit different, more "modern" and slightly outside even my rather large box. With this being a George Lynch and Jeff Pilson effort I was really wanting to like this album. I listened to Wicked Underground a few more times and the next thing I knew I was compulsively wanting to listen to this album over and over, almost like an addiction.

This album is the first time I heard Jeff Pilson handling lead vocals and in my humble OR opinion I feel Jeff is quite a good singer. Now why couldn't he have been the singer in Dokken? One of the main reasons why I haven't explored Dokken more is frankly, strictly my humble OR opinion, I can't stand Don Dokken's vocalizing and is a bit hard to get past or tune out to appreciate the work of the other band members. Knowing that Jeff can play several musical instruments and is very engaged with his music I am sure that besides playing bass and keyboards on Wicked Underground that he likely had a great deal of input in the songwriting.

I think George Lynch's guitar playing on Wicked Underground sounds great, is in a very good place and stays there. You can hear his distinctive playing style and what I figure his fans refer to as his "TONE". From my descriptive point of view I would call it more evolved than his guitar work with Dokken which I guess would be expected but is still very cool to hear.

The music has a very modern vibe to me and in a good way - modern to me being, ok, it doesn't sound retro and I don't relate it to any rock music from the 60's, 70, and 80's that I am most familiar with. The music is very forward sounding. The way I see it is these two old(er) guys decided to show young bands how a "modern" rock album is done right and did it beautifully.

Yes, I realize Wicked Underground is almost 12 years old at this point but even now I don't think the album sounds dated at all and still sounds very fresh. I don't feel you have to be a huge Dokken or Lynch or Pilson fan to appreciate this album. I for one would really like to see George and Jeff get together and do more original music at some point!