New Band Featuring DOKKEN, WARRANT Members 'Three-Quarters Of The Way Done' Recording Debut Album

The new band featuring three members of the classic DOKKEN lineup along with former LYNCH MOB and current WARRANT singer Robert Mason is about "three-quarters of the way done" recording its debut album.

Mason told the "Talking Metal" podcast that working with George Lynch, Jeff Pilson and Mick Brown has "given all of us a renewed sense of what it was like to be creating together and maybe even playing together. Jeff Pilson and I get along great," he said. "Jeff produced 'Louder Harder Faster', the new WARRANT record. And he and I have always been kind of friendly but didn't really know each other until that project, and we got on so well in the studio and elsewhere that it was a real easy tie-in for those three guys to call me up and say, 'Hey, man, we wanna do this record. We don't know what we're gonna call it, but it'll have the DNA of our bands, and it'll be us, but we want it to sound a little different. What do you think?' And I was all over it."

According to Robert, the recording sessions for the new band's debut disc are "going really, really well. We're super happy with it," he said. "I just hope everybody else digs it the way we do. You never know. People could hate it; I don't know. But I hope not. I sincerely hope everybody embraces it for what it is."

Mason also revealed that SUPER STROKE, which was originally announced as the name of the new project, will likely be replaced with something else by the time the band's first album is released.

"The name that floated out there was a working title," he explained. "The SUPER STROKE idea was a working title of one of the songs that we were writing.

"Everybody knows all the cool band names were taken until somebody comes up with another one that fits," he continued. "And I think somebody just said, 'Well, let's just go with that.' And apparently, either a publicist or the record company or somebody got hold of it and they're, like, 'Okay,' and then all of a sudden all this press came out. Because, obviously, the label wants to do as much hype work, leg work as possible prior to release, and they were pushing for a band name, an album title, something — something to latch on to."

Asked if the new project is musically similar to DOKKEN, Robert said: "I don't think it sounds like DOKKEN with me stapled on to it. I honestly didn't want… And it's no disrespect to anything, because I love what they did, and I was a fan — I still am. That wasn't something that I wanted to do. And thankfully, when Jeff and George started playing me demos and their early ideas, it doesn't sound like that. And Mick Brown [told me the other day], 'I'm so stoked about this. The cool thing is it sounds like us, but it doesn't sound like us.' It's Mick's way of saying that I think the DNA is there and you hear the influences and you hear who it is and what it is, maybe. We're just making music and having fun, but we are having fun being creative with each other again. And I pray that that translates into the final product and that people will just embrace that."

Last November, Pilson told Glide Magazine about SUPER STROKE's musical direction: "There's definitely some DOKKEN in there. There is a little bit of the straight-ahead LYNCH MOB-ness in certain aspects but then another aspect we get quite musical. It's not progressive but very musical. Some of the songs are pretty epic in their musicality. George is playing his ass off. I mean, the whole band is playing great, I got to say. And Robert is just an amazing singer and it's so much fun. Robert is in WARRANT right now, and he was the second singer for LYNCH MOB. There's a lot of connections in there."

The new project's first full-length release is tentatively due in early 2019 via Frontiers Music Srl.