When Wolfgang Van Halen began working on his debut, Mammoth WVH, in 2015, it took three years for everything to fully marinate. Writing all 14 tracks and performing all the instruments, the three-year span of recording was also penetrated by overthinking and resolving things. “With the first album, I was trying to figure out what the process was,” Van Halen says. “We worked for three years, over multiple sessions, just letting the project find itself.”
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Led by singles “Don’t Back Down” and “Distance,” Mammoth WVH hit No. 1 on three Billboard charts—Independent Albums, Top Rock Albums, and Top Hard Rock Albums—along with peaking at No. 12 on the Billboard 200. “Distance” also earned Van Halen a Grammy nomination for Best Hard Rock Song.
Taking Mammoth into a live setting, supporting Guns N’ Roses and Alter Bridge over the past two years, helped the singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist build more confidence around his songwriting and forced him, musically, to tap into more dynamic arrangements for his sophomore release, Mammoth II.
Touring also helped inform the overall sound of Mammoth—a moniker pulled from the earliest iteration of the band Van Halen—with Wolfgang tapping into heavier prog-driven influences like Tool and Meshuggah. “I felt a lot more confidence in this project as a whole,” Van Halen says. “I think that’s how the whole album ended up a bit more upbeat and aggressive. It’s much more different than anything on the first album.”
The surge in confidence also allowed Van Halen to take a more “inward” approach to songwriting and experiment by adding two nearly seven-minute tracks to the album—“Take a Bow” and “Better Than You”—which both clock in slightly longer than his lengthiest track to date, “Stone,” off Mammoth WVH.
Pulling a handful of melodies and fragments of songs from his “bank” of riffs and ideas, II was mostly composed from late 2021 through early 2022, with the exception of the high-powered “Another Celebration at the End of the World,” which Van Halen first started picking at a few years earlier.
“I think you always have a bank as a songwriter,” Van Halen says. “The idea for ‘Another Celebration’ was just this random thing that I didn’t think much of when I wrote it years ago. Then I added the pre-chorus and little things here and there, and it just became something.”
Along with help from his uncle, Patrick Bertinelli, who also helped him with Mammoth WVH, Van Halen was also vigilant when sequencing II. “I’m really proud with how this new one flows,” he says. “It’s almost perfect for a vinyl record because it’s split five [tracks] and five, with each side ending on a close to seven-minute song. It flows well in two halves, so the definitive listening experience will certainly be on a vinyl record.”
For Van Halen, writing II also served as a viable source of therapy. “There were so many good and bad things all happening at once that you don’t know how to react to things anymore,” he said. “There’s chaos and happiness, and then you’re crying, and then it’s great again.”
Van Halen initially put Mammoth WVHon hold to help care for his father, Eddie, who was battling lung cancer at the time. Recorded at the 5150 Studios, where he also laid down his debut, and where Van Halen (the band) recorded many of their biggest hits, IIfinds Wolfgang traversing the next batch of years, including the loss of his father in 2020 and its aftermath.
“With everything that I write, lyrically, it’s very much a therapeutic thing for me, where I’m always working out a bunch of shit,” Van Halen says. “The first album was written and recorded by 2018, so everything that’s happened in my life from 2018 until now, or until the time of recording this second album, is where my headspace was [on II]. I’ve had a lot of things happen to me between then and now.”
He continues, “I think that’s why this album is a bit more aggressive, and much darker, and inward, lyrically. I think the first album was more outward, socially. My lyrical style is relationship-based, but this time it was more inward. It was more of me fighting with myself and my own feelings and emotions than someone else’s.”
At first glance, from its title, “Optimist” comes across as a positive song, but Van Halen peppered in a sardonic twist on the heavier track. “It is a really angry, sort of negative song, so it’s almost a sarcastic title in a way,” he says. “Lyrically, it really reflects the darker tone. When it comes to the melody, I tend to magnetize towards more positive-sounding melodies, but lyrically, if it sounds positive, most likely it’s sarcastic.”
Another example is “Miles Above Me,” which Van Halen says plays like a love song but is focused on a breakup.
“Like a Pastime” is another track Van Halen says represented his state of mind the most on II. Centered around a 4/4-time signature, topped by polyrhythm, and accented by kick drums, the track came together as Van Halen was teaching his fiancée, Andraia Allsop, about polyrhythms.
Breaking into the rallying You’re all I want somehow / But now it’s all our own / So don’t lose hope / I think it’s time we take the throne, the fearlessly shredded“Another Celebration at the End of the World” also hits the essence of IIfor Van Halen. “In terms of song construction, that was the first song that really came together, and I think it informs the rest of the material on the album,” he says. “It’s a bit more aggressive and upbeat, in comparison to the first album.”
Hammering the album open on “Right?” Van Halen rips into the bolder melodic vertebrae of II while pummeling through a collection of frenetic solos, including an all-tapped one on “Erase Me.” Midway in, the longest track on the album and the longest Wolfgang has ever recorded, “Take a Bow,” runs five seconds shy of seven minutes.
Marking the halfway point of II, Van Halen tracked the guitar on “Take a Bow” with his father’s red, white, and black splashed Frankenstein (Frankenstrat, “Frankie”) guitar, along with Eddie’s original Marshall head amp and cabinet. “It’s straight up what he used on the earliest Van Halen records,” Van Halen said in an earlier statement. He also incorporated several other pieces from his father’s collection on Mammoth WVH. “It makes me happy to capture some of Dad’s history on this song forever.”
Falling one by one / Is that enough for you my love? / Failing everyone / Am I enough for you my love? / I swear I thought it was over / Just let me know when you’re done, Van Halen sings in the melodically driven “Take a Bow,” which explores self-worth and tenacity. On his more contemplative ballad, “Waiting,” Van Halen acquiesces Just wake me up / ‘cus I don’t want to dream too long before the loftier near the seven-minute close of “Better Than You.”
Supplemented by high-powered vocals, and more expansive lyrics throughout the album, II reveals a closer representation of what Mammoth is now and Van Halen’s dynamism as a musician and as a writer. Producer Michael “Elvis” Baskette, who has worked with Van Halen on four albums, including the two Tremonti albums featuring the musician—Cauterize in 2015 and 2016 follow-up, Dust—along with his Mammoth debut, also served as a running guide for Wolfgang throughout the recording of II.
“We work so well together,” Van Halen says of working with Baskette. “He’s pretty much the other half of the band in the studio, considering that I play and write everything. He’s that guide for me to help not overthink, or if I’m going in the right direction, or to help challenge me and pull more out of me that he knows that I can, even when I don’t think I could.”
These days, there’s no rush when writing, which Van Halen says often comes in spurts. “I haven’t really had one of those sparks, maybe since mid-2022,” he says. “I feel like I haven’t had the creative space to really breathe and relax, but I do have that bank of ideas that I can always go to for inspiration. When I have the opportunity to take a little break, I’ll be able to mess around and be inspired again.”
He’s much more inclined to allow songs to unravel over time, anyway. “I want to let the song find itself,” Van Halen says. “If I’m forcing it, then I’m doing too much. Usually, the first thing, melodically, that I come up with tends to be the thing that sticks the most. You don’t need to spin the wheels endlessly to realize that what you had at the start was it.”
On the first album, Van Halen admits he was caught up in rewrites and too much overthinking. “Sometimes taking a step away is what actually leads me to figuring everything out,” he says. “On the first album, on the song ‘Horribly Right,’ I spent three days trying to find the chorus and came back to what I was doing in the beginning and finished it in two seconds. Sometimes you can get too lost in the sauce to realize when something is right there in front of you.”
Melody always takes precedence over words for Van Halen. “Melody, in terms of my creative order, is more important than lyrics,” he says. “The song informs the melody, which informs the lyrics—in that order.”
Still consuming the songs of II, Van Halen is excited for what arrives the next time around. “I really do hope people enjoy the album,” he says, “because I think every song on the album is worth showing up in a live set at some point.”
Despite some of its darker undertones, Van Halen hopes there are more glimmers of hope within II. “We’re getting a lot of material that was written in a very dark time,” he says of the socio-political climate over the past several years and its impact on music. “We’re on the other side of something that changed everything forever. On top of that, there are personal things that ended up changing me forever.”
Van Halen adds, “If one person comes away feeling a little better, or has something resonate with them that makes them comfortable, or happy, or just helps them work through something, I think that’s all you can ask for.”
Reserve your spot for an epic rock extravaganza! Get your tickets early for Wolfgang Van Halen’s 2024 tour before they’re gone.
Photos by Travis Shinn
