4 songs in, and aside from Tattoo, this shit is pretty impressive, and heavy. Sounds like their stuff between Fair Warning and 1984.

OK, so "China Town" is pretty fucking hot.
But "Tattoo" is so damn bad, that I am going to need some more convincing. (And, yeah, I see the link there, but I'm not DLing anything these days.)

read that some of these tracks are actually from the early days (first few albums). makes sense now after hearing them.

There's a nice melody/harmony part running through part of "Tattoo" - it's not much, but for some reason I don't hate it.

That said, I have little to no interest in hearing this or seeing them.

barf

I don't even know what to say about this horse shit.

It's fucking Van Halen. Either you like them, or you don't. (Although, that "Tattoo" song IS horseshit.)

Oh, and I want to know who's singing those high harmonies, because they got the Mike Anthony thing down pretty good.

Why anyone wastes a minute of their time listening to Van Halen in 2012 is way beyond me.

Nostalgia; it's probably "hip" now to do so; and it's better than the recent output by the DBTs.

Well, I listened to that song, and it's easily better than 95% of the tripe circulating now.

chopping off a finger might be better than a long bath in acid, but that doesn't mean one should get out the cleaver and get to hackin'

It's supposed to be Wolfgang but I suspect a ringer.

I'm gonna check this out. I have to believe it still better than Iron & Wine.

early VH straight up rules. this sounds like early VH. if you don't like it, you just don't know how to party.

Tattoo stencils itself into the working memory system.

I'm on my third listen of the album. I'm a bit surprised how much I like it.

links are dead.

As to "why in 2012," nostalgia is a hell of a drug, and fuck me if Drop Dead Legs isn't a masterpiece. That and the fact that clicking a youtube link and listening to 60 seconds of something isn't like taking out a mortgage.

Of course if one didn't really listen to VH a lot when one was younger, nostalgia doesn't really come into play.

True. I am only speaking for my (attempted but failed) listens. To put it in perspective, I haven't gone to look for fresh links on my own yet, and may not. So if that establishes my threshold, there we go I guess.

Damned good album and quite the pleasant surprise.

Imagine if this were to have happened in '96 (when the presumptive reunion, after the Cherone hiccup, was supposed to happen -- then got torpedoed by Eddie taking offense at DLR "upstaging" Beck at the MTV Video Awards). Hell, maybe Nickelback never would have happened. & no Limp Bizkit? At least, no follow-up to the dreary, Alice in Chains-y Three Dollar Bill$ Y'All? We can only imagine it.

(At this point, I should point out I had the biggest crush on a tenth grader back in '97 -- I was in twelfth grade -- who was smart, a nice (casual) dresser, & drummer in the school's jazz ensemble, & her favourite band was Limp Bizkit. I didn't think anything of it, since it seemed just a phase -- my only exposure to the band was the lo-fi video for the even lower-quality song "Counterfeit" that inexplicably got play on 120 Minutes, in the period -- plus I liked questionable music (OMC, "How Bizarre"). Anyway, as ever, I never made a play for her. But I should have. & because of that, my distaste for Limp is tempered by knowing that JP enjoyed it (at one time).)

what the fuck is wrong with you people?

Who knew that Van Halen could be as divisive around here as The Wrens?

I know this was a rhetorical question, but I will answer it anyway.

What is wrong with me is that I was growing up when VH put out their first handful of albums, I wore them out then, and I still enjoy some of them. It's hard not to be nostalgic when the former leader of a band rejoins the group you once listened to ad naseum as a kid. If this were such a rejoining of a lead singer of say, the aforementioned Limp Bizkit, then I would have the same reaction as you did.