(As a quick aside: Robert Plant, in his time with Led Zeppelin, would adlib various vocal asides on a regular basis, and while not all of them are terrible, he never found a way to make these asides consistently not annoying. David Lee Roth recorded the vocal part for "Running with the Devil" at age 22, came up with adlibs far more ridiculous than anything Plant ever even dreamed of, but nailed the right approach to take to these sorts of things right away. I'm just saying)

"Eruption" might "only" be a guitar solo designed to show Eddie's amazing technique (especially in regards to tapping), but you may as well say the Mona Lisa is "only" a painting of some woman; it's a statement of purpose for Eddie, showing a vast array of potential tricks that could potentially get included in any song at any time. "Ain't Talkin' 'bout Love" centers around an amazing set of rising Eddie licks (the solos are also a treat, showing a lot of grace), and Dave's vocal part shows so much swagger and charisma that the idea of somebody preferring Sammy Hagar's renditions just puzzles me. "I'm the One" is basically a boogie-rocker, but it's a Van Halen boogie-rocker, with bonkers speed and some great vocal acrobatics, especially in the incredible doo-wop part they stick in the middle because why the hell not. What a great first half.

The second half is a little less face-melting than the first, but it's fine. "Jamie's Cryin'" and "Feel Your Love Tonight" are relatively lightweight pop songs (in comparison), but they still have good riffs and memorable vocal parts and fun guitar solos, and they're too much fun to dislike. "Atomic Punk" tries a little too hard to sound dark and serious, but that down-and-up guitar sound is great, and Dave's delivery is so over-the-top that I don't mind it. "Ice Cream Man" (a cover of an old blues song by John Brim) is basically an excuse for Dave to revel in metaphors that are clearly naughty even if it's hard to put your thumb on exactly why, and it's a hoot. "Little Dreamer" is the closest thing on the album to a power ballad, and it's not bad; it's not in the band's wheel-house, but Roth has so much personality, and Eddie has so many guitar tricks to unleash in a slow steady stream, that it ends up working just fine. And finally, "On Fire" is a speedy and noisy number with Roth and Anthony screaming "I'm on FIIIYYAAARRRRR!!!!" as loud and high-pitched as they can muster; what's not to like??

What a terrific album. Yes, like the band, it ultimately influenced a bunch of music I don't enjoy, but the sheer talent and energy and exuberance on display here overwhelms me so much that I just can't hold that against them. If for some reason you've never bothered to listen to this album, you should fix that as soon as you can.

My favorites on the album aren't especially creative, but what are you gonna do. "Dance the Night Away" is a gentle pop rocker, with Eddie's guitar relegated to a supporting role (but working well in that role, especially in the chorus), and it's so effortlessly memorable and sung so well that I can't help but feel incredibly happy when it comes on (it's way better than either "Jamie's Crying" or "Feel Your Love Tonight," and I like both of those quite a bit). On the other end of the spectrum is the blazing rocker "Somebody Get Me a Doctor," where the band comes within a whiff of turning into Motörhead in a song with a set of pummelling riffs, a full-throated great Roth delivery (with all of his adlib powers out in full force), and a sense of menace (it is about potentially overdosing from drugs, after all) that seems genuinely earned.

The best way to understand the other 8 tracks, I think, is to compare and contrast "Spanish Fly" with "Eruption." "Spanish Fly" is a guitar virtuosity showcase in much the same vein as "Eruption," but it's on acoustic guitar this time, and this "similar, but different" feel permeates much of the album. Eddie is still great, but less obviously prominent, while Roth is still great, but more obviously prominent (Alex and Michael are still pretty much exactly the same), and the result is basically Van Halen pulled away from trailblazing hardrock and more towards ... something else. "D.O.A." is a snarly bit of hard rock that weirdly sounds ahead of its time in spots (every time I listen to it I feel like the main riff could have fit in well on Bleach ten years later) even if it sounds exactly like Van Halen in other spots. "Women in Love" is a decent pop-rocker lifted up by a FANTASTIC gentle Eddie introduction, the closing "Beautiful Girls" is a fun bit of swingin' poppy cock rock, "Light Up the Sky" is a fast rocker that goes for an epic vibe but is only especially memorable in the chorus (the energy level compensates, though), "Outta Love Again" is a somewhat messy rocker with an especially interesting Roth delivery and a good solo in the middle (though one that sounds much more like something that could have come from many classic rock guitarists and not just from Eddie Van Halen), "Bottom's Up!" starts off sounding like a generic hard rocker but gets so filled up with Eddie guitar tricks that I forget about that initial impression ... oh, I almost just stuck all of the rest of the album into one sentence, didn't I. The one remaining track is the opening "You're No Good," a cover of an old Dee Dee Warwick song (most famously covered by Linda Ronstadt before Van Halen) that gets made into a dark, spooky lumbering number that can't help but suffer against "Running with the Devil" or "You Really Got Me" but sounds quite interesting on its own. The slow descending chorus is fine, but it's the matching screeching between Dave and Eddie that really makes the song work, and the soloing is good enough to avert any fear that the album might somehow dip from the debut an unacceptable amount.

No, I can't accept the notion that this somehow equals or surpasses the debut (this isn't a situation like Ramones/Leave Home, for instance), but it's hardly a sophomore slump (I mean technically I'm calling it a sophomore slump but not in the perjorative sense), and its brevity (it clocks in at around 31 minutes) means that its "weaknesses" don't have a chance to linger for too long. If you like the debut, you should get this as well.

The album hits a bit of a lull afterwards, though, and while the tracks in this stretch aren't bad by any means, they cause my attention to go wandering more than has been typical of the band to this point. "Fools" actually reminds me of Deep Purple in the instrumental parts (the vocals are definitely Roth in full clown mode, though) more than it does Van Halen to this point (I should note that, while Deep Purple also had a song called "Fools" it bears no resemblance at all to this one), and while Van Halen doesn't sound bad working in a more traditional idiom, I don't think it's a clean fit. "Romeo Delight" is fun in the moment, with a lot of tricky rhythms and some entertaining guitar showcasing here and there, but it's kind of a mess, and Van Halen at its best isn't really a "mess" band. And the combination of "Tora! Tora!" and "Loss of Control" (I'm not counting "Tora! Tora!" as its own thing) is another Motörhead crib, but definitely not as successful as "Somebody Get Me a Doctor" was.

Fortunately the album finishes on a strong note. "Take Your Whiskey Home" is a strong Southern-tinged rocker, starting as a crisp acoustic number (with a great Roth delivery) before turning into a fun swinging groove, and "Could This Be Magic" uses acoustic guitar throughout, creating a top-notch sequel to "Ice Cream Man" (I mean, it's not like there's a lot of acoustic numbers in the early Van Halen world, so these comparisons will happen) with a rousing chorus ("I see lonely ships upon the water"/"Better save the women and children first"). The closing "In a Simple Rhyme" reminds me (lyrics aside) more than anything of one of the rockers from Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, and that's absolutely a compliment; hard rocking, but complex without being overbearing about it or losing the thread of memorability that's necessary for Van Halen to function at its best. The 20-second hidden track, "Growth," is a forceful way to round things out, and I actually feel sad when I remember that it's not going to go any longer.

No, it's not a great album, but it's another fine inclusion to their catalogue, and I can't imagine a Van Halen fan not enjoying this. It would have been a little disappointing if it turned out that they'd leveled off at this point (like if the #1 pick in the NBA draft started out looking like a superstar and then turned into just a borderline All-Star), but fortunately they found another gear.

The two biggest standouts on here are the hardest rocking ones, and they're pretty different from the rockers the band had done to this point. The opening "Mean Street" opens with 30 seconds of an Eddie sequence that sounds like it was pulled straight from hell (in a good way), and the main song has a dark funk-rock feel that's pretty compelling (Dave does a good job of delivering lyrics that make it sound like he's actually interested in serious social commentary even though I have my doubts), and the result is a song that I've long thought sounds like the musical equivalent of the New York City depicted in the Scorsese film of similar name. "Unchained" is another pummelling rocker, with a stronger bass presence than has often been the case in Van Halen rockers to this point (one positive point with this album is that Anthony, for once, actually sounds pretty far from an afterthought with his instrument), and the mid-section, which contains one of the very few moments of goofy levity allowed to David on here ("Okay Dave, give me a break" / Hey hey hey! One break ... coming up!!!!"), makes me laugh every time. The chorus of this one is fantastic and heavy as hell, if you haven't heard it.

The rest isn't as immediately striking, but it's generally quite good. "'Dirty Movies'" continues the opening track's venture into the scuzzier areas of urban life, and the mix of funky growling and Gilmour-esque echoey beauty from Eddie's guitars works perfectly (Dave's "take it off!!!" yell in the middle is a hoot as well). "Sinner's Swing!" is basically generic mid-70s heavy rock (done faster) at its core, but the silly "Get, get, get, get, get out and push!" chorus is totally Van Halen, and I like the song. "Hear About it Later" starts with a dreamy guitar line whose sound I always associate with caramel for some reason, and it's every bit as interesting once it becomes the heavy center of the song. The backing vocals singing "I don't wanna hear about it baby ..." are great, the mid-section where it sounds like Van Halen playing Black Sabbath playing power pop is a delight, and hell, if somebody randomly decided to tell me this was one of their top 5 Van Halen tracks, I might not even bat an eye.

As for the material after "Unchained," the most memorable (though I'm not sure it's the best) is probably the pop anthem "So This is Love?" which, with somewhat different production, probably would have fit in just fine on the first album. "Push Comes to Shove" is a slow disco-rocker (with Anthony doing admirably) that's gloomy as hell, and the last two tracks are an angry keyboard/drums/bass instrumental ("Sunday Afternoon in the Park") that features Eddie trying to work out the band's future direction, and an energetic rocker ("One Foot Out the Door") that's fun when on (the mix of angry synths and angry guitars is fascinating) but disappears just when Eddie's starting to really cook on his guitar.

I don't exactly think this is fantastic, but I would definitely rate it very highly (it's definitely top 3 from Van Halen for me), and if somebody has only heard the debut or 1984 I would hope they would get a copy of this as well. The tensions exposed in this album would only get worse and ultimately result in Dave's departure, but that's later, and this is now.

GOOD GOD THAT'S JOHN MCFERRIN'S MUSIC!!!

I've always really liked this one, even though this is typically regarded as the least impressive of the DLR-era Van Halen albums (to my understanding, fans don't typically dislike it, but they're less enthusiastic about it than any of the others). The contents of the album and the circumstances surrounding its creation (it was a very rushed recording process, largely to quickly follow up on the success of the "Pretty Woman" cover they released as a single) make this relative dismissal somewhat predictable: as usual, it's very short (about 31 minutes), and this time, out of the 12 tracks, 5 are covers, and an additional 2 are really just extended introductions for the tracks that immediately follow them. Of the 5 originals, only 2 of them are rockers of the type that would have fit in comfortably on Women And Children First: "Hang 'Em High," a punk-thrash number that lives up to their previous punk-thrash numbers, and "The Full Bug," which starts off as an up-tempo acoustic guitar number (with both the guitar and Dave's voice in their lower registers) and turns into an entertaining adaptation of bluesy-boogie licks that have been filtered through Eddie's creative kidneys. Otherwise, though, the originals are different enough from what the band had typically done to this point that a hardcore devotee to that sound could potentially be turned off. "Cathedral" is another guitar instrumental, but this time focusing on beauty and ambience much more than on explosive chops (Eddie said that the intent was to make the guitar sound like a church organ, and I totally hear it), and I think it's absolutely lovely. "Secrets" is a very low-key, unobtrusive pop song, neither a rocker nor a ballad, but as quiet and as delicate as it is, it's also very self-assured, and Dave's restrained delivery is great. And "Little Guitars" starts out with an extended flamenco-like acoustic introduction (the introduction has its own track on the CD but I ripped the introduction and the main song together), and the main song alternates between a heavily phased guitar sound (that doesn't really sound that different from a lot of the sounds that, for instance, Alex Lifeson was using on much of Permanent Waves) to an odd guitar pattern that sounds like Eddie's fingers are doing some weird dance along the fretboard (meant in a good way), and the moment when Eddie finally sends the guitar line into the sky is one of pure ecstasy.

The covers, then, are a blast. The opening "Where Have All the Good Times Gone?" may not be as necessary as "You Really Got Me" was, but it's still a great time, with Dave and Eddie both finding a good balance between faithfulness to the original while still finding a way to make the song their own. "(Oh) Pretty Woman", preceded by the lengthy instrumental "Intruder" (written when they realized they'd made the music video for "Pretty Woman" way longer than their cover, and a fun time in its own right, featuring some hellish guitar noises over an ominous synth line and a steady drum beat), quickly became one of the band's calling cards, thanks to one of Roth's best vocal parts with the band (and with great asides such as "Mercy!" and the hilarious *tongue rolling noise*) and thanks to Eddie's guitar tone finding a perfect home with the riff. "Dancing in the Street" isn't quite as iconic, but I like it just as much: it's basically a hard-rock/disco take on the song, with Eddie using some combination of his guitar and synths to fill the mix with all sorts of sonic weirdness. I really like the backing vocals to this one as well (Dave is fine too).

The last two covers (surrounding "The Full Bug") make no attempt to sound like Van Halen as we've known them to this point, and while many might consider this a bad thing, I consider this a BIG FAT GOOD THING. "Big Bad Bill (Is Sweet William Now)" is a an old jazz number from the 1920s, and this version, featuring Jan Van Halen (the father of Eddie and Alex) on clarinet and everybody else on the appropriate versions of their instruments, is absolutely dripping with charisma in Dave's vocal part. Maybe an entire album of songs like this would have gotten boring, but as a one-time goof, it's low-key one of my favorite early Van Halen songs. And finally, they close things off with a barbershop quartet a capella version of "Happy Trails" (with Dave prominently singing the "bom ba dee-da bom ba dee-da" line before he finally takes the lead), which I once again find a total delight.

No, this is not a great album, and if Van Halen had had more time, this is probably not the album they would have made in early 1982. And yet, more than any other Van Halen album (even more than the debut), it puts on display the talent the band had for pure goofy entertainment, which the band had basically thrown away for Fair Warning (FW is a better album, but it's nowhere near as much fun to listen to). If your enjoyment of Van Halen is primarily based on fun, and well it should be, then there's no reason not to own this and enjoy it.

Broadly speaking, the album divides into two main categories (after the introduction): the big hit singles, and everything else. Among the big hit singles, "Jump" and "I'll Wait" carve out a new path for the band, while "Panama" and "Hot for Teacher" essentially walk a familiar path (perhaps with a little more arena rock gloss than usual), but all of them are absolutely fantastic. Among the big hit iconic singles of the mid-80s (not just from Van Halen from anyone), "Jump" is one of my absolute favorites, and not just for the iconic synth riff. Dave's vocal part is incredible (it's almost impossible to sing this song or karaoke or otherwise without sounding ridiculous, but Dave sounds fantastic), Eddie's guitar parts are fun, but the absolute peak of the song is the synth solo in the middle, with guitar parts exploding around it like fireworks. "Panama" is about as good as big fat arena rock gets, especially in the orgasmic build out of Dave's suggestive monologue in the middle before the blast of the "PANAMA!!!!" chorus returns (and what a great chorus riff). "Hot for Teacher" is Dave at his peak as an overgrown 8th grade manchild ("I brought my pencil!! Give me something to write on!!"), and it's impossible for me not to grin like an idiot and mouth along when this one comes on (Eddie smokes on this one). And "I'll Wait," as far as it may be from what the band had been successful at to this point, is a spectacular success, a kind of 80s arena rock "Pictures of Lily" in terms of subject matter (but almost entirely built around synths in addition to the pounding drums), and delivered with an interesting mix of passion and emotional detachment (Dave sounds weirdly like Ozzy Osbourne on this one) that makes it sound like nothing else.

The four non-hits are a somewhat mixed bag. "Top Jimmy" is ... fine. The opening guitar harmonics are the most interesting part, and the main song is basically a driving punkish song with a catchy chorus that pales a bit to some other successes they'd had in this vein. "Drop Dead Legs," to the extent that the album has a misstep, is probably it; it tries so hard to be a scuzzy and sleazy mid-tempo AC/DC song, and it kinda succeeds along those lines, but the band doesn't feel entirely comfortable taking this approach, and in retrospect it somewhat predicts some of the more boring aspects of the Hagar years. The last two are pretty nice, though. "Girl Gone Bad" is most memorable in its introduction, which makes out like it's building into the most epic and important rocker the band ever wrote, and while it gets by much more on urgency and and tension than on clear hooks, it's still a song I like overall. And finally, "House of Pain" is a sorta bluesy, sorta Sabotage-era Black Sabbath-y number that's definitely one of Van Halen's better deep cuts, and that groove the band rides over the last minute is so great that it always leaves me a little pissed off that this version of the band couldn't stay together.

There are Van Halen fans out there who actually don't like this one much, considering it too much of a departure from the band's roots, and that opinion might have made sense at the time the band was active and releasing these albums. After the fact, though, this album remains a clear standout of its era, and even somebody who doesn't like Van Halen on the whole could enjoy the hell out of this. If you like Van Halen, well, you probably have this already.

Now if only this had been a six-album page ...

Hagar's arrival isn't the only change of significance, though. The approach to the overall sound has been changed significantly; where the band had previously kept one foot in its garage rock roots by regularly shoving Eddie's guitar into one channel, the guitar is now more cleanly blended with the rest of the band, which in one sense makes the sound stronger but also ends up robbing the band of its own iconic personality. Regarding the songwriting, much of this album was written before Hagar arrived, and thus some of it sounds (in parts) like a logical continuation of the band's previous approaches, but Eddie has now decided to delve into the world of prom ballads, and the results are not great overall (more on this later). And finally, the album is much longer than anything the band had done to this point (the succeeding albums would only get longer from here); the band had never cleared 36 minutes before, but now it clears 43, and this comes from padding out songs in a way that the band had largely avoided to this point.

Of the three ballads, "Why Can't This Be Love" is the best, mostly thanks to the interesting guitar/synth Eddie uses with the odd rhythm, but the other two are quite bad. "Dreams" is often regarded as at least somewhat of a highlight on this album, but I've never liked it (the synths are too dinky and Sammy's singing is kinda gross, though I guess some parts of it are ok), and "Love Walks In" is a big gloppy monster that Dave would never have allowed in a million years. If you're ready to protest that I liked "I'll Wait" but don't like this, please: "I'll Wait" sounds much more like something from, say, Gentle Giant's Civilian album than like "Love Walks In" or the like.

On the non-ballad tracks, my enjoyment of them tends to be a function of how much I can overlook Sammy, whose best moments are ones where he doesn't actively harm the sound (he never contributes anything that would actively improve the material, you see). I actually think the album ends on a pretty strong note; "5150" has a terrific introduction centered around some great Eddie riffage, and the band is smart enough to build the whole song around that riffage (sometimes slowed down, but sped back up when necessary), and the closing "Inside" is built around a cool dark bassline while a drunken brawl is acted out (it might be about a game of bridge but I'm not entirely sure) and various classic Eddie guitar sounds and riffage abound. But the rest ... I mean, "Good Enough" could easily have been reworked into something pretty great, but Sammy just ruins it for me from start to finish. "Get Up" has some noisy chaos that I enjoy, I guess, and I suppose that "Summer Nights" (with some swing in the riffage) and "Best of Both Worlds" (good alternation between louder growling guitars and softer guitars) have their nice aspects ... but none of these are songs that I would choose to listen to over any given Roth-era song.

(As an aside, if you've just been involved in a very public split with your previous lead singer, and people are vocally unsure that you've made a good choice for his replacement, is naming the first track on your first album with this singer "Good Enough" really the best of ideas? I'm just saying)

For all my general negativity towards this album, I don't want to be reckless and go too low with my grade for it. Eddie may have made a ton of bad decisions in putting together this album, but they hadn't become creatively bankrupt, and so much of this album gives me the impression of a better one trying hard to break out but not quite able to make it. Besides, they were a long way from hitting rock bottom at this point.

I'll admit that I quite like "Finish What Ya Started," a very clear-sounding bluesy rock stomper with crisp Eddie licks and a strong guitar sound; to the extent that Sammy has a type of music that would suit him decently, this is probably it. I'm also somewhat ok with the speedy rocker "A.F.U. (Naturally Wired)" (it becomes less interesting in the slower verses, and not just because of Sammy's singing), with a moderately interesting riff in the introduction and chorus (not a great guitar tone, though), and I guess I like "Source of Infection" despite (or maybe because?) it's trying its best to sound like something from the first few albums (Sammy trying to do Dave-isms is kinda silly but I appreciate the effort); the speed and the backing vocals make it at least kinda fun in the moment.

There, I said the nice things about this album, now let's get down to business. The keyboard-heavy ballads on here are garbage: "When it's Love" is every monster ballad cliche that I hate (big synth-heavy introduction + mid-tempo "rocking" verses + big fat chorus), and "Feels So Good" largely wastes a decent keyboard pattern (even if the tone is too wimpy even for my tastes) by latching it onto the big rhythm section and creating something that essentially leaves no impression at all. The opening "Mine All Mine" combines drum machines and synths with metallic guitars in almost the exact mix that has always grossed me about about Jethro Tull's "Steel Monkey" (from the year before), and I'm not a fan. "Cabo Wabo" has a moderately interesting and funky main riff, but this kind of big fat swaggering nothing of a "rocker" is basically the ultimate cliche of what a band does if it's become too fat and happy (and how on earth is this 7 minutes when it can barely support 3??). "Black and Blue" is another bluesy rocker but essentially the opposite of "Finish What Ya Started," going for a big sound instead of an intimate one, and my main impression from it is always that I wish Sammy would shut up. "Sucker in a Three Piece" makes no impression on me at all (and takes 6 minutes to do it), and finally the closing "A Apolitical Blues" (a Little Feat) probably would have been better with a less annoying vocalist and a tighter rhythm section (Eddie seems to be fine though).

I just totally half-assed this review, and I don't even care. Every time I listen to this album I just get angrier and angrier (except at "Finish What Ya Started" which has really grown on me), and there comes a point where enough is enough. Why are most of these songs about twice as long as they should be (this one cleared the 50 minute mark, by far making it their longest to this point)? Why is Sammy Hagar somebody the others in the band wanted to work with at this point? Why is Sammy Hagar, in and out of Van Halen, somebody that lots of people adore?

Why is Sammy Hagar???

Sadly, all of these aspects, as nice as they appear in the abstract, are done in the service of mid-tempo(ish), underwritten, overlong arena rockers that, for the most part, are only distinguishable from each other in their choruses. Mind you, some of the choruses are pretty decent, especially in "Runaround," but it takes so long to get to them that it's not really worth the effort. Out of the first eight tracks, aside from "Runaround," the most notable of the tracks is "Pleasure Dome," which lasts an inexplicable 7 minutes and, for all of the ways in which everybody plays their asses off and makes a loud din, is basically the epitome of "sound and fury signifying nothing," especially in the seemingly endless monologuing between sung parts. I'm sure that there are people who have listened to this album enough times to have deep observations about each of the individual rockers that make up the first eight tracks, and more power to them, but man that seems like a poor use of a life.

The last three tracks are more individually notable, for reasons good and bad. I will say this: the piano-centric introduction (which reprises here and there) to "Right Now" actually seems pretty great to me, and I wish it had been grafted onto a better song. Sadly, "Right Now" is now and forever the biggest punchline of the Hagar era, and not just because of its association with Crystal Pepsi; it practically defines the genre of crappy late 80s / early 90s anthemic power ballad. The last two tracks are better, though, and probably the best part of the album. "316" is a brief but pleasant acoustic guitar instrumental, a badly needed respite from the overall instrumental monotony of the rest of the album, and "Top of the World" is an anthemic rocker that, heavens be praised, comes in at less than 4 minutes! This is important; the ideas are good (I like the descending lick that starts it off, and the vocal melody is pretty memorable), and the length can actually support the ideas, which is not the norm for this album.

This is by no means anything near a good album, but I don't hate it like I do so much of OU812. Honestly, a random 30 second snippet of this album is more likely to entertain me than not, and if this album had been a 38 minute album (with most of the songs getting cut by 25% or so), I might like it more. Recommended to nobody, but at least here I can somewhat understand somebody genuinely liking it.

The various "surprises" don't help matters much either. The band includes solo spots for the different members, and while this can sometimes go pretty well, it goes about as poorly for this band as it possibly could. Only Eddie's extended wankfest (which starts as "316" and eventually turns into "Eruption" while quoting bits of "Mean Streets" and "Cathedral" along the way) is any fun at all, soulless as it might be; otherwise, you have two stupefying wastes of time placed back-to-back thanks to Michael's lengthy (and not worth it!) bass solo and Alex's lengthy (and not worth it!) drum solo (after a brief introduction of "Pleasure Dome"), and later you get two no-good very boring songs from Sammy's solo career ("One Way to Rock" and "Give to Live"). They also do a version of "Won't Get Fooled Again" that's ... er ... um ... well, it's kinda novel the way that Eddie tries to replicate the synth sounds with his guitar, but ultimately the song doesn't work because, among other things, Alex Van Halen isn't Keith Moon, Michael Anthony isn't John Entwistle, and Sammy Hagar isn't Roger Daltrey.

Amongst everything else, they do sprinkle in some Roth-era material, but as much as I'd like to say that these are a wonderful respite amongst the rest, I really can't. I guess "Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love" and "Jump" are done decently enough (though Sammy wipes out all of the cool atmosphere of the "I've been to the edge" portion of the former by turning it into a chance to say hi to the crowd), but "Panama" sees the mid-section get hijacked by Sammy delivering the least helpful high school convocation remarks imaginable, and "You Really Got Me" gets superglued onto "Cabo Wabo" in what ends up as just about the dorkiest pairing imaginable. Pass.

On top of everything else, beyond the bad songs and the bad spoken interludes and the bad solo spots, the album received an amount of post-performance doctoring that I find kinda offensive, and I'm generally fairly forgiving about that sort of thing. In various parts, Eddie didn't like how he'd played something, so he'd go back and fix it, but by fixing it he made Sammy sound bad, so Sammy had to fix his part, and when it was all said and done Sammy had re-recorded a very large number of his vocal parts for this. Good job everybody!

I'm this close to giving it an even lower grade and marking it as the undisputed worst "regular" live album I've ever heard ... but ehn, it's not clearly worse than Delicate Sound of Thunder (at least it doesn't take classic material and turn it into elevator music), so I guess that's something. Absolutely nobody, not even somebody who really likes Van Hagar, needs to own this.

At least the opener is pretty good this time, though according to a later interview it had been written in part well before Van Halen had become a band. "Seventh Seal" often gets compared to U2, though I would qualify that comparison; it sounds like a predecessor to late-period self-imitation U2, like something that would have been a highlight on No Line on the Horizon, and not like something from contemporary U2 (who were still doing pretty well at this point). The monk chanting at the beginning (and recurring here and there) is a little silly, but the main song, featuring a great echoey set of ever-morphing licks, comes closer being a great song than probably any other Van Hagar song; sadly, the Sammy vocals hold it back, but still, it's an impressive effort from Eddie. From that point on, though, the album becomes a chore for me, even as it clearly makes some attempts at diversity beyond what was present on F.R.I.C.K. (which, aside from "Right Now" and "316," had pretty much no diversity). They attempt to incorporate elments of grunge with "Don't Tell Me (What Love Can Do)" (which partially touches on Kurt Cobain's suicide), but it can't get around sounding like a bunch of 80s dinosaurs trying and failing to keep up with the times. "Amsterdam" sounds somewhat like the kind of heavy music the Morse-led version of Deep Purple would start playing around this time, but it falls flat largely becuase Michael Anthony and Alex Van Halen couldn't hold a candle to Roger Glover and Ian Paice (come at me bro), and that's even before accounting for the terrible lyrics (Eddie and Alex were mad that Sammy wrote lyrics for a song about a city from their birth country and made them all about pot). "Big Fat Money" seems to be an attempt at fusing old-fashioned rock and roll with the general VH aesthetic, and honestly it would probably work with Dave, but it doesn't quite work with Sammy. I guess "Aftershock" has some good riffage buried inside of it, but as presented it's just so dull.

The album has a good number of songs that definitely don't sound like what one would typically associate with the band, whether in the Hagar era or in general, but they're all covered in the kind of mid-90s kinda-alternative production murk that I had lumped all rock music into before I actually decided it was worth getting into, and the diversity here doesn't excite me. The album's most famous song is "Can't Stop Lovin' You," which has some aspects to it that could have led to it working as a touching up-tempo anthemic ballad, but if Sammy doesn't ruin it for me, he comes very close. The song is largely inspired by circumstances relating to Sammy's recent divorce, but the catch is that it's not written from Sammy's point of view: it's written from the perspective of Sammy's ex-wife, because Sammy was convinced she was still in love with him, and if that's not the most low-key assholish perfect summary of the sort of thing that puts me off from Sammy in general, then it's close. Much later, there's an old instrumental ("Strung Out") that's basically Eddie throwing things on a piano for a minute, and this leads to an ok piano ballad ("Not Enough") that loses its charm as it gets bigger (first with the gospel chorus and then with the inevitable switch to becoming a giant arena ballad). The Alex drum solo is 2 minutes of an Alex drum solo, the 4-minute Eddie-centric instrumental "Baluchitherium" sounds like a middling Steve Hackett instrumental from around the same period, and then the last two tracks finish things on a typically meh note. "Take Me Back (Deja Vu)" starts off acoustic and charming before turning into another plodding rocker, the closing "Feelin'" has a nice simple guitar line that dances up and down a compact melody for a while before, sure enough, they turn it into another plodding rocker. Lol, "politicians smoking crack."

I'm not surprised that it did well commercially, like all Van Hagar albums did at the time. The production approach that so turns me off was all the rage in 1995, and it has just enough of pop elements and hard rock elements to lure in listeners who would enjoy their favored half and tolerate the other half. Nonetheless, this was a dead-end even by the standards of Van Hagar, and while I remember some people enjoying this a lot when I started high school, I don't remember anybody admitting to liking this album or this version of the band by the time I started college. As with all Van Hagar albums, don't bother.

In the wake of splitting from both Hagar and Roth in a relatively brief period, Eddie apparently decided this was a good time to try something different. The choice of Gary Cherone to serve as the new lead singer was a bit of a surprise; he was younger than the rest of the band by a few years and much younger than Hagar, and he definitely didn't sound like either of his predecessors. The approach to the material also changed pretty significantly; whereas previous albums had had enough creative involvement from other members to reasonably justify including everybody in the songwriting credits, this one could reasonably be classified as an Eddie Van Halen solo album (there are songwriting credits from everybody just as usual, but all indications are that this is somewhat of a farce), with Eddie taking on a large amount of the bass duties and even lead vocals in the last track. The songs are pretty different from what the band had done lately (and have nothing to do with the original version of the band); it's primarily built around the arena rock model, yes, but there's a lot of slow brooding in the material (not just in the ballads either), giving Eddie's guitar a chance to do a lot of interesting things in and around the main ideas on which the songs are built. This is an album where Eddie clearly put a lot of thought into the small details of his guitar playing, and if the only criteria that you use to judge a Van Halen album is "is Eddie doing novel and technically impressive stuff?" then you might well find this much better than I do.

Sadly, this album is horrendous, and that's kind of a shame, because there are some bits here and there that I feel like could have been made into something enjoyable in a different context. The tension at the base of "Once" is intriguing, the riff that opens "Fire in the Hole" is great, the soft portion that opens "Josephina" is lovely, and the closing "How Many Say I" (where Eddie takes lead vocals) could have served the function of a Keith Richards ballad in a late-period Stones album (not something great, but something that lends an interesting mood). Alas, the goodness of this album is largely theoretical (I guess the gentle opening instrumental "Neworld" is something I find nice without reservation), and there are two main culprits. The first is that Gary Cherone is one of the worst singers I've ever listened to (he might be better in the context of his former band, Extreme, but I'm not in a hurry to find out); there are a couple of moments when he sounds nice (like the start of "Josephina") but most of the time he just screams, and it gets exhausting in a hurry. I guess the idea was to find a way to bring back the youthful exuberance element of the band by adding somebody full of energy, but there had to be a better way to do this than to add somebody who's barely interested in singing.

The other problem is worse, if such a thing is possible. Long albums and long song lengths never worked for Van Halen before (they were always best when they erred on the side of efficiency), and this album takes every length objection I had during the Hagar years and amplifies it. This is 65 minutes long!!! 4 of the songs are more than 6 minutes long!! One of the songs is 7:42, and another is 8:34!!!! Except for the two short instrumentals, that clock in at under 2 minutes each, every song here is well over 5 minutes long!! The padding ruins everything, including "How Many Say I," which should have ended at 3 minutes but inexplicably goes into orchestration that helps pad it out to 6 minutes that are totally undeserved. I guess the idea was to create an album that would seem difficult at first but that would reward subsequent listens, but each additional listen just makes me angrier at the length of these songs (for instance, "Once" seems fairly moving if it's not actively listened to, and becomes infuriating if paid attention to).

The album tanked, the tour tanked, and while Eddie and Gary actually got along, the band's label forced them to part ways with Gary, saving everybody from a second album. Don't buy this unless you absolutely have to hear every note that Eddie Van Halen ever recorded for official release.

* 2000: Roth and the other band members tried to work together again and write new music. It didn't work.

* 2002: Roth and Hagar toured together as a double-headline act, with each taking turns opening for the other. Anthony often played with Hagar, but never with Roth. Roth and Hagar apparently did not get along (shocking I know).

* 2004: Hagar reunited with Van Halen to tour in support of a new greatest hits compilation (Best of Both Worlds) that included three new songs. The catch was that Anthony was not invited back as a full member, but instead as a supplemental musician; the reasons for this are not entirely clear (some possible reasons include that the Van Halens disliked that Anthony had played in support of Hagar's solo projects, or that the Van Halens disliked that Anthony was making money on the side by selling hot sauce). The tour made a lot of money, but as soon as it was done Hagar wanted nothing more to do with the band, and Anthony was more or less set adrift.

* 2006: Roth floated that reunion talk was starting again, though at this point it was hard to take it seriously. In the meantime, Anthony started touring with Hagar as "The Other Half." Reunion talks continued.

* 2007: Van Halen was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ... and only Anthony and Hagar showed up.

* 2007: A reunion tour was announced and confirmed on the band's website, and the band's online logo was restored to their original one.

* 2007: On the band's website, the original artwork for the band's albums airbrushed Michael Anthony out of all of the images ... then restored them when people complained.

* 2007: OMG THEY ACTUALLY REUNITED AND TOURED (with Wolfgang Van Halen, Eddie's teenage son, on bass). I saw them in October with my parents, and it was awesome (my mom had been a huge fan of the Roth-era when I was a small child, and my dad ... loves my mom).

* 2007-08: Multiple shows were postponed, but ultimately they got through the tour and didn't break up when it was over.

* 2011: After spending a few years together on the road, the band decided that the time was now right to start thinking about making a new studio album together. The hero of the recording process, in a strange twist of fate, was Wolfgang, who found exactly the right way to get the band to make an album that wouldn't disappoint the hell out of everybody (he was also the one who ultimately persuaded his father that recording new material could be something worthwhile). Early in the recording process, Wolfgang found a bunch of demos that had been recorded in the earliest period of the band's life, and he managed to persuade his father and the others that they should rework some of these demos into material for the new album. This provided two major benefits: first, every old song they included was one fewer new song that the band would have to try and write from scratch, and second, the act of intensely studying material from the band's oldest days helped steer the others from whatever mindsets they'd developed over the years that made them less cool than when they were young. The older material was often reworked significantly from its original versions, of course (which is probably for the best; if these songs hadn't been included in the band's initial run of albums there was probably a reason for it), but this general approach worked very well, and the result was an album that can easily hold its own with the original run (it's not on the level of the band's major classics, but it's more-or-less on par with the slightly weaker Van Halen II and Women and Childen First). It doesn't sound exactly like something from that era; it runs far longer than the band's original albums typically did (and haven't I been complaining about how the band didn't do well with long runtimes in the post-Roth era?), and the guitar mixing doesn't return to the "live" sound with Eddie's guitar panned hard left, but these features don't really hurt anything; the individual songs don't generally overstay their welcome (only one song reaches 5 minutes, and most are under 4), and the production is super strong, with all of the instruments packing a punch without needing to jack up the overall volume excessively.

The lead single (and album opener) was "Tattoo," and while it's not bad, I think it might be the weakest song on the album, and not an especially good representative of what's contained therein. It's one of the songs that reworks old material (a song called "Down in Flames" that the band played in its first major tour), but for all of the fun of hearing Roth singing over that guitar sound again, it's still a pretty bland mid-tempo stomper, and not especially inspiring. MUCH better is "She's the Woman," based off a killer riff full of those rhythmic stutters that help make early Van Halen so addictive, and the solo in the middle is really nice. I guess in a certain sense it would have been nice to have a version of this with Anthony's backing vocals, but Wolfgang does fine, and he probably plays the bass part here way better than Anthony would have.

I don't want to go track by track here, since all of the remaining tracks are at least good on a "it's sooo good to hear Eddie and David working together again" level, but there are some other songs that merit special mention. "China Town" is a speedy frenzy that could have fit in well on Fair Warning both in lyrics (darker than usual) and music, and whenever David sings the chorus over those wah-wahs I'm in heaven. "Bullethead" wouldn't have been a clear highlight in the first two albums, but I bet it would have found some major proponents had it been released then; it's more power and punkish energy than tune, but the power and energy are enough in this case. "As Is" starts off as just about the heaviest song they've ever done before turning into a more typical speedy Van Halen number, and the bluesy spoken monologue in the middle is a crackup. "Outta Space" (another reworking of early material) has riffage and rhythmic fun that's worth noting in an album with good amounts of each, "Stay Frosty" starts off as Roth being ridiculous (a la "Ice Cream Man") over an acoustic guitar before becoming a full-blown rocker, "Big River" is an up-tempo pounder (the drums and bass are simple but in a way that perfectly supports all of Eddie's riffage) that becomes anthemic without really trying (in contrast to all of those Van Hagar numbers that desperately strived to become anthemic but just became bland), and "Beats Working," should it end up as the band's final studio track, serves as an effective tongue-in-cheek statement of purpose for the band, filled with all sorts of pleasurable Eddie guitar lines.

The reunion-era of the band would have been plenty enjoyable even if they had decided only to serve as a touring unit, but I'm very glad that they decided to take a chance and churn out one last album. This turned out about as well as one could have reasonably hoped, and unless somebody feels very offended by the idea of an album with Roth but without Anthony, I don't see how a fan of early Van Halen wouldn't enjoy this a lot. After all of the garbage the band put out for so many years, they owed the universe a pleasant surprise, and they came up with one.

Setlist aside, the performances are a lot of fun. The biggest thing to know going in, which shouldn't be a surprise, is that Roth sounds every bit his age on here (he was in his late 50s), so anybody who goes in (foolishly) expecting this to sound exactly the same as the original studio albums might feel some disapointment. Personally, I think he sounds wonderful; Roth was always somebody who got by on charisma more than raw singing chops, and whatever he's lost in terms of range and power, he's maintained (and maybe even gained) in terms of charisma, and he absolutely has the crowd eating out of his hand (especially in how he speaks fluent Japanese throughout and sometimes claims that his Japanese isn't very good only to follow it with long extended phrases that are apparently well understood by the audience). He's definitely 10 times the frontman here that Hagar was on Right Here, Right Now, that's for sure.

As for the Van Halen family, well, they rip through the songs with great aplomb; they stay fundamentally the same as the studio versions, yes, but there are lots of tweaks here and there to give the performance a sense of variation from the original, and these variations are clearly not simply the result of not being able to play the originals correctly. Wolfgang sounds fine on backing vocals, and there's no reason to regard him as lesser on bass here than Anthony was originally (and he's almost certainly better in most spots), Eddie's guitar roars just fine (it's not quite as direct in its punchiness as in the original studio versions, but I enjoy it), and Alex ... well, he's alright. My favorite part of the album is probably the breakdown in "Everybody Wants Some!!" where everything gets kinda trippy and atmospheric, but really, picking out individual great moments here isn't exactly the point. The point is the overall effect, and this album delivers.

As of 2017, it's hard to imagine Van Halen putting out any more material, live or studio: A Different Kind of Truth proved that the band could still make decent original music together in 2012 (albeit by cribbing off a lot of material from their younger selves), and this album showed that, indeed, they could still deliver as a live act even as they moved into the senior citizen stage of their collective careers. Another live album from this incarnation of the band would be pointless and crass, but as a one-off late-period live album, this is an absolute treat.