Van Halen - A Different Kind of Truth (2012)

I was very surprised after listening to this. I was stunned that a band that had largely altered their sound from its original incarnation and had not performed together in over 20 years (well, 3/4's of the original line-up, anyways) could pull off such a convincing return to form. After hearing the rather pedestrian single, 'Tattoo', I was almost led to believe that conjuring fourth "hits" was the last thing on the band's mind as the majority of this album finds them getting down and dirty by going back to their roots, which they have done in fucking spades.

Again, not only am I surprised with how close this sounds to the band's "classic" era, but I am also astonished to hear that Diamond David hasn't lost a fucking thing as well. It does seem as if he cut down on some of the more gratuitous aspects of his approach, but this hardly takes away from the finished product.

Both Eddie and Alex sound just as great as they did in their prime and being that I don't usually pay much attention to bass guitar, I guess Eddie Junior did a great job as well, I mean, I don't hear any "suck" coming from out of his corner, so...

Now I understand that some people got butthurt that this album didn't live up to their expectations. I'm not exactly sure what it was that they had expected other than perhaps the band revisiting the ultra-gay "Van Hagar" era, which I am fucking ecstatic that they did not! I'll just pretend that the albums between '1984' and this did not exist altogether.

Bravo.