Van Halen

Van Halen III

Steaming Pile of Garbage

Review Score:

(2/10)
I recently have been getting back into the hard rock of my youth and buying the Van Halen CDs I only had on tape. This brought on memories of all the rancor of a few years ago with the Hagar firing and the Roth "Reunion." I realized I had never heard 'III' so I decided to give it a shot. Boy, do I regret it. This is downright horrid music. Beyond the obvious reasons it stinks (I'll get to Cherone in a minute), the production value is awful. This album is the result of Eddie Van Halen's overblown ego. The man absolutely refuses to acknowledge that the talent of David Lee Roth, and yes even Sammy Hagar, have just as much to do with the success of Van Halen as his guitar work. (There's barely any pictures of them on the official VH Web site! It's like they never existed!) Eddie thinks he is the only talent in the band and that the fans will just blindly accept anything put before them. Well, the joke's on you, as the meager sale of only 500,000 copies of this album prove. Cherone is awful. At best he sounds like...Hagar..., and at worst he [is bad]. What's so upsetting, is the two new Roth tracks on the Best Of: Volume 1 were so fantastic and showed how great the band could have been again if they would all just swallow their pride and make music. But Eddie refuses and puts this pile in our lap. Advice to Eddie: If you don't make amends and bring either Roth or Hagar back into the band, Van Halen's career is over. It's that simple.

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