Ultraphonix

All-star band do it the old way: jamming in a garage and throwing all their influences into the melting pot.

What do you get when you put Living Colour frontman Corey Glover, Dokken guitarist George Lynch, War bassist Pancho Tomaselli and ace session drummer Chris Moore in a garage together? The answer is: hard rock band Ultraphonix – and a debut album of scorching funk, rock and metal missives titled Original Human Music. “I’d never met George,” Glover tells us. “There was a ‘getting to know one another’ part to this thing, and once we did we got along very well and it was off to the races.”

How did you all get together? It was through a mutual friend of ours, Lisa Balfour, who’s a stylist. George wanted to do something very different from what he was used to. He had Pancho and Chris around and he’d said: “I need a singer.” Lisa suggested me.

Who writes the songs?

It’s a very collaborative process. We did it in George’s garage in LA. I’m East Coastbased, but I’d go to LA, spend a few days there and we’d write and record. I know the internet is the new way to do things, but it didn’t feel right for us.

The album has many influences.

We all brought our own ingredients.

The hard rock comes from George. The eclectic elements come from me. Pancho comes from War, and Chris can do anything. When you hear George’s name you think of Dokken and Lynch Mob, but he didn’t come fully formed as a metaller, he listened to blues, folk, funk and soul. This record uncovered elements of our musical lives that get overlooked.

What’s the message with opening track Walk, Run, Crawl?

This was Chris’s track. He was looking at what was going on with the gas pipeline in the West or the water in Flint, Michigan, environmental disasters based on greed. It’s hard seeing decisions based on greed, where people don’t matter as much as profits.

Like Chuck D’s Prophets Of Rage, are Ultraphonix bringing back the protest song?

That’s my stock-in-trade with Living Colour. We talk about the human condition, what’s going on and why. We question the idea of what’s acceptable. We tend to think these days that music is connected to some sort of product, but it’s an emotional response. We look at the world and this music is an emotional response to what we see.

“This music is an emotional response to what we see going on.”

The world’s become a much scarier, less liberal place again.

We’re all reeling from what’s going on. For some people things never changed, it didn’t matter who was in charge. That’s what the last Living Colour record was about. But the thing you can always count on in oppressive times is that really good music is gonna come from it. I’m proud to say I’m a part of that on two fronts now.

Have you played together live yet? Not yet. I’m looking forward to touring with them. I want to live with them, find out what being on the road with them really means.

Which of you will have the worst habits on the tour bus?

[Thinks for a moment] I’d imagine it’s George… Yeah, just George. JK Original Human Music is out on August 3 via earMUSIC.