Search - Van Halen :: Van Halen II

Daniel Y. (coolascaliban) from CANTON, MI
Reviewed on 1/27/2008...

Awesome disc. Classic Van Halen. David Lee Roth is shown in a cast in the inner liner notes, he allegedly broke his leg making the leap on the back cover.

Track Listing:

1. "You're No Good" (Clint Ballard Jr.) 3:16
2. "Dance the Night Away" 3:06
3. "Somebody Get Me a Doctor" 2:52
4. "Bottoms Up!" 3:05
5. "Outta Love Again" 2:51
6. "Light Up the Sky" 3:13
7. "Spanish Fly" 1:00
8. "D.O.A." 4:09
9. "Women in Love..." 4:08
10. "Beautiful Girls" 3:56

3 of 3 member(s) found this review helpful.

VH II one of the epoch albums of all time

R. Gloria | 02/15/2010

(5 out of 5 stars)

"VH II captures the definitive essence of EVH's brown-sound. What more can you say ?"

A Great Second Try For Van Halen

Andre S. Grindle | Brewer Maine | 04/27/2010

(5 out of 5 stars)

"When I was younger my uncle was heavily into Van Halen but up until this point I never actually listened to any of their albums all the way through. Now I realize I am reviewing their second album before hearing their first one so the best thing to do is review it on it's own merrits as opposed to a follow up to a debut. I personally don't listen to a lot of hard rock music but along with AC/DC,Aerosmith and some of the later Led Zeppelin albums this album is very appealing. I just read someone describing Van Halen as lacking creativity. They sure didn't. Eddie Van Halen is right up there with Jimi Hendrix,Jimmy Page and Pete Townsand in terms of reinventing the sound of hard rock guitar. Some of his riffs,vamping and even mildly psychedisized lines here are surprisingly clean and fit right in with Van Halens funky sounding grooves and tight harmonies. They open this album with a cover of Linda Rondstat's "You're No Good" which really captures that spirit. The groove is tight and the arrangment and riffs are top notch for this kind of music. The Van Halen brothers really keep the music from becoming just a big noise fest,something that happens to all too much music in the hard rock vein. The hit "Dance The Night Away" really establishes Van Halen's trademark melodic hard rock,based here again more on groove and clever vamping as opposed to any arena posturing yet they got plenty of action on that front anyway. That song has a heavy Rolling Stonesy quality which really brings out the funky blues bottom to the song itself. "Bottoms Up","Outta Love Again","Lights In The Sky" and "D.O.A" are all more sturdy,traditionally fast rock tunes that when performed ontage probably gave "Diamond Dave" an opportunity to be at his athletic rock showman best. The tunes are more theatrical than edgey and that helped the band develope their persona even more. One of the most interesting songs is "Spanish Fly",an under a minute instrumental featuring an almost latin-fusion style tune played acoustically by Eddie Van Halen and really lets him excersise his muscles as a musician of that era. The final tune "Beautiful Girls" is one of the great funk/hard rock hybirds next to "Walk This Way" or "Back In Black". The groove is tight,the riffs walk right along the beat and Dave's decadenet vocal line is just icing on the cake. Even for a second album this really continued the flair and swagger of Van Halen in it's prime and at the very least showed that sophmore slump wasn't going to be a big issue for them."