David Lee Roth, of course, already let slip that Van Halen is at work on a new album. Now comes confirmation from Wolfgang Van Halen, by way of Mark Tremonti. Wolf has been working with Tremonti’s eponymous band in between Van Halen gigs for the past couple of years.
Tremonti was actually being interviewed about his solo band by VH1 Radio’s Dave Basner when the conversation turned toward his suddenly very famous sideman.
The younger Van Halen joined his dad’s band as they toured in the run up to 2012’s A Different Kind of Truth, which was built around left over songs and demos from the band’s hey day.
Van Halen had not recorded with Roth since 1984, and hadn’t issued an album of any kind for some 14 years before that. Wolf has said that he suggested they return to previously unfinished work, in order to jump start the creative process.
Fans responded: A Different Kind of Truth made a successful No. 2 debut on the Billboard charts, moving nearly 190,000 copies in the first week. The subsequent tour was halted, however, when Eddie Van Halen suffered some health issues, and attention immediately turned to a follow up.
Wolf, meanwhile, started working with Tremonti, who rose to fame with Creed and now also performs with Alter Bridge. And it turns out that lining up the two schedules has become more complicated lately.
“With Wolfgang in the band now, he does a lot of work with Van Halen right now,” Tremonti tells VH1. “They’re putting together a new album, so it’s going to be hard to get everybody’s schedules to line up.”
Asked if Wolf had confided any details on the new Van Halen music, Tremonti says: “You know, he doesn’t. He just says, ‘Yeah, sounds great, man. Sounds great.'”
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I’m looking forward to this. From a marketing standpoint, the last album was a train wreck; a terrible choice of first released song and video let way too much air out of things, and the tour seems to have been too much too soon, when things could have stood to bake a bit longer first.
But there are some genuinely great and positively electrifying songs and moments all over the album. It’s a shame that the stuff around it distracted from us getting an honest-to-goodness revival of the classic VH sound. I’d like to see these guys succeed, and hope to hear more.