In the two years since Wolfgang Van Halen‘s music project released its second album, Mammoth II, the band shortened its name from Mammoth WVH (a tribute to his late father‘s band, Van Halen, and acknowledgment of his own identity) to the scaled-back Mammoth.
That’s about all that’s changed in the interim. For their third album, The End, Van Halen once again handles all instruments, singing and writing duties by himself; the music, similarly, lands in the middle ground between early 2000s hard rock and a contemporary update.
Mammoth is a modern-day band with one foot in the past of Van Halen’s youth, so the mix of sounds that surges throughout The End — hard rock, melodic metal, grunge and electronic — is genuine. At no time does Van Halen attempt to exploit his lineage, aside from recording the album at his dad’s 5150 Studios. The End was undoubtedly made by someone who grew up in the late ’90s and early 2000s.
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Produced by Michael “Elvis” Baskette, whose work includes records with the alternative metal bands Sevendust, Alter Bridge and Limp Bizkit, The End is often as direct and rigorous. At times, the effect is a nagging sameness that erases detail; it’s Van Halen’s growing talent as a songwriter that elevates the best songs here, “One of a Kind,” “The Spell,” “All in Good Time” and the title track.
To his credit, Van Halen has no towering pretensions for Mammoth. Much like his dad’s band at the beginning of their career, the goal here is immediate rock ‘n’ roll, and on that most basic level, The End succeeds. If it’s all merely average in a competent way, it still presents a compelling portrait of an artist confidently developing his individuality.
Van Halen Albums Ranked
A ranking of every Van Halen album.
Gallery Credit: Ultimate Classic Rock Staff
