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It still comes as something of a surprise to realise that Wolfgang Van Halen is approaching his mid-thirties. It seems like only yesterday that the child prodigy was touring as the bassist with Van Halen at the tender age of 16, making a record, A Different Kind Of Truth, with the band as he approached his twenties, and going on to become a vital component of the turbocharged group Tremonti at 22. It’s a remarkable résumé.
Admittedly, the family genes and reputation helped, but he’s been standing on his own two feet since his 2021 album Mammoth WVH, which he reportedly started working on at the tail end of 2013’s A Different Kind Of Truth tour. He’s been making up for lost time ever since.
Three albums in four years. And while he keeps his live band on the road for months at a time, everything else is Wolfgang Van Halen: he writes all the songs, sings every part, and plays every instrument on the records himself, usually starting to build the song from the drums up. That’s still his favourite instrument, and the first one he learned to play when he was nine. Not with the help of his uncle, Van Halen drummer Alex, but learning from father Eddie, who taught him to play the drum parts for Highway To Hell on a coffee table and a pile of magazines.
Later, he worked away for weeks at a time in his father’s band’s home from home, the 5150 studio. Maybe there’s something in Malcolm Gladwell’s so-called ‘10,000-hour rule’ – that it takes approximately 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to achieve mastery in any skill. Listening to The End, you get the feeling Wolfgang’s been putting the time in.
Case in point is the title track (with its wonderfully unhinged video homage to vampire flick From Dusk Till Dawn, original director Robert Rodriguez returning to help recreate that world), which crashes in like a daunting mix of classic Van Halen and 80s Rush, before revealing some sublime pop notes and a guitar solo that could turn a truck over. (Just for good measure, and possibly to prove that he is a solo star, he also feeds his band to the marauding vampires.)
Just great too is the thrumming All In Good Time, a countrylike lament bolted on to a hard rock refrain. The thundering riff of I Really Wanna underlies a cajoling, pointed lyric that is somehow playful but not without bite, while the rattling Selfish has similar snark, a driving melody propelling the song along, Wolfgang’s white knuckles on the wheel, the sound of redemption or revenge ringing in his ears.
The End, then, is anything but. As the old adage goes, three’s a charm, truly.
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