Van Halen

Van Halen III

Is this really Van Halen?!?!

Review Score:

(2/10)
Leave it to Edward Van Halen to ruin a good thing. Two years after the 1996 reunion-gone-bust fiasco with David Lee Roth that was directly and intentionally caused by the Van Halen brothers and their manager at the time, the Van Halen brothers Edward (guitar) and Alex (drums) along with bassist Michael Anthony tried to forge ahead with former Extreme vocalist Gary Cherone by releasing an album with a seemingly-appropriate title - 3. I purchased this album the day it was released. After taking it home and listening to it, I felt like slamming my fingers in a door again and again and again. I couldn't believe my ears! This ultra pansified, sissified, wimpy, washed-up bowel movement should have been titled, "Honey (or should I say Valerie), I'm home! Let's go watch National Geographic and play pattie-cakes on the Discovery Channel with Hatchie Malatchie and get Mr. Rogers Neighborhood to come on down with us to Little House On The Prairie with Romper Room and call the cops to come get the cat out of the tree with Ozzie and Hariett while we eat milk and cookies with the Brady Bunch and play hop-scotch and ring-around-the-rosie with Leave It To Beaver while we get ourselves a little flower garden and a picket fence on the Cosby Show and then drive around with our little picnic basket and red and white checkered blanket listening to and singing along with Old McDonald Had A Farm and the theme to Sesame Street!" Guess what Eddie, ooops I'm sorry, Edward, you SISSIE...LIFE AIN'T LIKE THAT ANYMORE!!! You grew up way too close to mommie! This isn't 1930 you know...Santa Claus does not exist and there's no Easter bunny or tooth fairy!!!! Eddie's got all the spine of a chocolate éclair on this album! I just can't believe what a wuss Edward is these days. Next thing you know...he'll be tucking his shirt in, buttoning his top button, fixing his pocket protector, and singing along to the theme to Blues Clues and roasting marshmallows around the campfire with his little son Wolfie. Damn I get psychotically and homicidally angry when I think about this one album and everything it stands for. This album doesn't even sound like music at all...let alone music coming from the very band that recorded Hot For Teacher! The writing on this album sounds like it was done by a couple of 80-year-old, wheel chair ridden, adult-diaper, kidney dialysis patients at nursing home! There's no organization to the music...it just doesn't sound like it's music at all! This album was so depressing (both lyrically and musically) that I felt like I was at a funeral. Gary Cherone tries to be too serious with his lyrics, and his voice sounds like Sammy Hagar on a bad day. And I won't even get started ranting about the song "How Many Say I". Let's just say Eddie's singing combined with the music (if you wanna call it that) on this song made me want to slice my wrists, and we'll leave it at that. Had this song been the first song on the album instead of the last, I wouldn't have even bothered wasting any more time listening to the rest of this putrid disappointment of an album. My biggest regret was that I had thrown away the record store receipt BEFORE I had listened to the CD. Had I kept it, I could have (and would have) scratched the disc and taken it back for a refund. I gave the disc one star only because the system won't let me give it a zero or, more appropriately, a negative number! Where's Diamond Dave when you need him!!

More Reviews: