Mammoth WVH is a name that should be fairly familiar to a slew of the rock crowd by now. The Wolfgang Van Halen-led band seems to be the go-to band when you need an opener on a massive tour in arenas or stadia. Opening for the likes of Metallica, Guns N’ Roses, Alter Bridge, and Mötley Crüe plus performing at the Taylor Hawkins tribute shows, and writing and recording both this and the self-titled debut makes him sound like a bit of a show-off. Except, on the strength of listening to this album, it’s not – he simply knows what the hell he’s doing.
Mammoth WVH’s debut album was a great and accomplished listen. But Mammoth II takes it to another level. Brimming with confidence and ensuring it’s an eclectic collection of songs, there’s not any song which sounds like another here. Yet it all works due to Van Halen masterminding the whole thing with Michael Baskette. It’s hard rock in various flavours, all of them modern but with a pinch of old-school sensibility to keep the older generation’s attention which is even reflected in the album title in the vein of Queen and Led Zeppelin’s early works.
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For the most part, it’s an album full of up-tempo rockers but each with a different bit of shading. “Right” explodes out of the gate with hints of Audioslave and along with lead single “Another Celebration at the End of the World” is as close to straight-forward rockers as you get. Indeed, the latter is a banner moment of an album chock full of great songs. Van Halen shows off the dexterity in his voice, belting in one moment before effortlessly transitioning to rasps, matching the guitar work step for step. It scratches, it chugs, contains hints of Queens of the Stone Age’s boogie moments, all while fighting with the runaway train drums. Then there’s the blistering solo that those twice Van Halen’s age would envy.
“Miles Above Me” brings it down half a step for a more sombre moment but it’s still full-on enough to get the blood pumping. Full of longing and anguish, it’s more emotionally wrought than other numbers on the album. Meanwhile “Take a Bow” has a mid-career Alter Bridge feel to it where its twinkling guitars in the verses meet its oppressive counterparts in the chorus, the segue between each section as seamless as Alter Bridge would handle it.
Elsewhere, you can expect a track which has an AC/DC boogie and crunch to it, a post-grunge moody number, a big rocker which balances light and shade you’d expect to hear from Shinedown and a chunky punk number, plus another ballad for good measure. Moreover, closing track “Better Than You” has the grit of Foo Fighters and the rhythmic feel of The Beatles as well as some bright vocals from Van Halen that you’d expect to hear on the John Lennon numbers.
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It might sound like Mammoth WVH is trying to do too much on this album but by keeping it to a spare ten tracks and corralled by two people, Wolfgang Van Halen has a great body of work on his hands. You get the sense listening to this that the electric nature of it poured from him and it wasn’t a choice. It’s a delightfully modern album which takes cues from a wealth of classic and modern bands and Van Halen has managed to carve out his own niche by making hard rock which doesn’t sound like the rest of the genre.
Header image by Travis Shinn
Mammoth II is out now
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