Saturday, 11 February 2012

Van Halen: A Different Kind Of Truth

Yippee!

Dave Lee Roth finally rejoined Van Halen a few years ago and they have got round to making a new album, which is the first one with the original line-up (glossing over the fact that Eddie Van Halen's son Wolfgang replaced Mike Anthony on bass, they sound exactly the same) for... er... twenty-eight years.

It's not a towering work of genius like their first six albums* (politely ignoring side one of the fifth), but it's still incredibly good and Eddie Van Halen's guitar playing is as astonishing as ever. For a fuller review, click on the cover:My new 'blog header is a line from the song "Bullethead".

* Update, having listened to it for a few days, actually it is just as good as the other albums, it's just really badly recorded/mixed.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Mark,

Don't know about VH. But I do like a sreamlined, NYC Hudson!

MikeW

Mark Wadsworth said...

MW, wow, that's a real existing locomotive. I assumed it was just some heavy metal fantasy of how people in the 1930s would have imagined locomotives of the year 2000.

Shineymart said...

Mark

>>towering work of genius<<
Yep - VH were awesome with Roth the first time around. VH1 was astonishing considering it was released at a time when three-chord punk ruled.

Saw them supporting Black Sabbath at Bristol Colston Hall in '77 and twice in Birmingham in 78/79. Fantastic exponents of hard rock (don't like the term Heavy Metal) before they went 'soft' with Hagar.

Actually as a teenage drummer it was Alex that really got me (!!) rather than Eddie.

Shiney

Usemeplz said...

Wow, it's great! I like his style! Van Halen is a legend of world's musicians!

Anonymous said...

I've only just realised that the Van Halen brothers are the Dutch versions of Cliff and Engelbert.

Mark Wadsworth said...

SM, Alex is undoubtedly as fantastic a drummer as Eddie is a guitarist, but there's a limit to what you can do with drums, but there does not appear to be a limit to what Eddie can do with a guitar.

Anon 12.50, I knew they were born Dutch, i didn't realise they were half-Indonesian, because they look quite white-European.

Anonymous said...

dunno abaht all that but i do know 'sensible shoes' is a true rock classic