Stephen I'm not really a huge fan of Lee Roth but VAN HALEN's debut was so excellent and influential, I had to give it a full five stars. It's Hagar's era that I think are their golden moment but it's debatable among fans. Anyway, focusing on this comeback, it's fun to see how this album stir up two opposite camps and you can find many extremely great reviews as well as horrendous opinions.

'Tattoo', when it was out for the first time, I think it's irritating and blunt but after more than 4-5 times you listen to that, you actually can enjoy the groove and the whole song except the chorus chant of course. 'She's The Woman' is okay, and 'You and Your Blues' reminds me to 'Ain't Talking Bout Love' which is a great track. What troubles me with Roth era is that I can't find delicate melodies as in Hagar, because Eddie is focusing on his guitar bonanza while the songs are mainly just average-to-good.

'Blood and Fire' and 'Outta Space' are awesome pieces, I love it, but then some lousy tracks like 'Bullethead', 'Honeybabysweetiedoll', or 'Beats Workin' dragged the album down below. 'China Town' is a good track, and the riffs are just mind-blowing, although the song itself isn't really great and catchy. 'Stay Frosty' is strange, with a little country/acoustical style before erupted with a good shake and incredible solo.

Bottomline, this is definitely not a bad album, but then it's far from their best. It's kinda sitting in the middle, but still the guitar part is always crazy. Fans of Lee Roth and early VH days will enjoy this one better than me perhaps, especially with most songs were old demos from the 70s, but I concur this one's quite a good stuff

Time Signature Outta space...

Genre: hard rock

Van Halen's long anticipated new album is out, and featuring no less than three members of the Van Halen family on drums, bass, and guitar, plus David Lee Roth on vocals, this is an album that is bound to make any long time Van Halen fan happy.

To me, I must admit that "A Different Kind of Truth" is a bit of an uneven ride. I definitely do not understand why 'Tattoo' was chosen as the opener, as it strikes me as being quite sub par and almost limping compared to many of the other tracks on the album, such as 'China Town', 'She's the Woman', 'Bullethead' and 'Out of Space', all of which are in-yer-face super strong uptempo hard rockers. While I think that there are plenty of really good songs on this album, such as the ones just mentioned, there is still a handful of tracks that do not appeal to me and that, to my ears, come across as being relatively weak - it might be that the tracks that appeal to me are so super great that even a track which is 'just' good will come across as 'mediocre' if you know what I mean.

This being Van Halen, there is, of course, a lot of awesome guitar playing - and both the guitars solos and the guitar riffing is amazing and should go straight to the heart of any fan of guitar-driven rock. I am a bit ambivalent about David Lee Roth's vocals, I must admit, and I know that a lot of people will consider me an ungodly blasphemer for feeling like this, but, while his performance is flawless and his soulful voice suits many of the songs on the album, I cannot help but feeling that it takes a singer with a more powerful and versatile voice to match up with Eddie Van Halen's guitar delivery.

But, in any case "A Different Kind if Truth" is definitely a comeback of magnitude from one of the most legendary acts in the world of hard rock and heavy metal and any fan of hard rock should definitely check it out.