Joe (He Stares In Teenage) Fernbacher, Creem, 7/79
When Van Halen is soarin’, when they’re creatin’ massive disturbances in the molecular structure of the cosmos, when they’re lurching forward from the frosted mists of an alien suburban haze, when they’re magnetizing, when they’ve got all those lug-nut noiseasms working just right, they can chip the rust off any satellite. Why is Van Halen a group hysterical enough to cleanse the fading soul of an aged metal mahatma? Well, while so many other bands of the h & m ilk are busy careening about the inner philosophical workings of machine-head, the VHs are ignoring said workings and not so quietly weaving a noisy chastity belt for a world intent on destroyin’ its only prophylactic against radiation impregnation. Y’see, this little orb is surrounded by many layers of radiation. The first layer is the dreaded Van Allen Belt, the second the not-so-dreaded Van Cliburn Belt, the third the ever-yawnful Van Heflin Belt, followed by the slowly-developing girdle named (drum roll) the VAN HALEN BELT (rimshot).
On their first LP, the VHs ran with the devil and created the next-to-last big thing--the atomic punk, the nuclear nerd, the radioactive rapscallion, the--you get the meaning. So on this second eagerly-awaited release, they’ve got quite a lot to live up to, and they do crack away at the wailing wall of noise to a certain extent, only this time around they’re a little too subtle and a little too clean and a little too cautious and a little too boring.
Following their soon-to-be-developed trend of doing cover versions of good old songs (sort of like a comedian stealing material, which ain’t all that unusual seeing as how it’s been found out through the grapevine that Ed Roth, aka the Face, is none other than a blood relative of Uncle Miltie Berle hisself), Van Halen begins its attack with an absolutely cringing version of “You’re No Good,” originally a pop love song, then transformed into an angst-laden feminist dirge, and finally transmortified into an anthem of misogyny. It works if you’ve just mass consumed 14 cases of beer and nine bottles of no. 10 valiums and you can’t pick up that beautiful blonde over there at the bar because you can’t figure out how to make your mouth work. Frustration translated into anger in an emotional display of the old physics adage (taught to me a long time ago by an old physic), every action has an opposite and equal reaction. Hubba hubba.
Following all this aural sensuality comes this summer’s BIG hit, “Dance The Night Away,” a song that cooks like a body under the sun. It reminds me of high moons, no wind and car accidents. The only truly noteworthy toon emerging like a Van Gogh amidst the Walter Lantzs on this set is “D.O.A.” (not another cover, nobody has that much nerve), a nice quiet cavatina to the bliss of oblivion and the sigh of brain rot.
Van Halen, the group, not the Belt, are here to stay, so we might as well get used to it: at least Roth is better than Jim Dandy, and those Van Halen brothers sure can make good faces, which is a primary part of the ever-complex definition of heavy metal sonicology. Put simply within the barbed-wire history of the movement of metal, this bunch isn’t as good as early Montrose or the Black Sabbath boys, but they are a sight better than 80% of the other slag passing itself off as metal music. This year’s II LP is good prod-rock and all the udderless drones will glom the glint and drool the decibel when Van Halen hits the airwaves like Kronos crunching some poor Mexican with a metallic plunger...yadda yadda.
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