When A Different Kind Of Truth arrived in February 2012, fans heard more than just the first Van Halen studio album in 14 years. It was a bridge between eras, a rare moment when the band’s past collided with its future and it was built in large part by a then 20-year-old Wolfgang Van Halen.
Looking back today, Wolfgang sees that album as more than a late-career chapter for his father Eddie Van Halen and frontman David Lee Roth. It was the band’s rebirth. “I wanted to remind my dad of the mindset he was in when he wrote songs like Runnin’ With The Devil and Dance The Night Away,” Wolfgang told Noise11.com. “Recording those old songs made it easier for Dad, Dave and Al to put their minds where they were back then and get back to writing how they would have then.”
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It was a bold mission for a son stepping into the space long held by original bassist Michael Anthony. Wolfgang had joined the band in 2007 at just 16, replacing Anthony ahead of Van Halen’s massive reunion tour with Roth. That tour became the highest-grossing in the band’s history, earning over $93 million and re-establishing the Roth-era line-up as a major draw. But it wasn’t until years later that Wolfgang pushed the idea of making new music.
“Dad wasn’t too keen on recording again after the reaction to the songs on Best Of Both Worlds,” Wolfgang said. “But once I started digging through old demos, I got really excited about what we could do. I think that excitement rubbed off on him. We were doing it for us.”
Those old demos became the seed of A Different Kind Of Truth, Van Halen’s twelfth and final studio album. Wolfgang unearthed rough tapes recorded in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, including She’s The Woman, Bullethead, and Outta Space – and brought them to Eddie and Alex Van Halen at their 5150 Studios in California. The band reworked, rearranged, and re-energised them with Roth contributing new lyrics that reflected his life decades after the originals were written.
By the time they entered Henson Studios in Los Angeles with producer John Shanks in 2011, Wolfgang had evolved from bassist to co-producer and creative guide. “Dad would ask me about the musical direction constantly,” he said. “I was there talking to John [Shanks], coming up with new sections, trying things out. It really felt like I was helping to shape the sound.”
The record fused the bite of the early Roth years with modern production muscle. Songs like China Town and As Is were ferocious, while Stay Frosty nodded cheekily to Ice Cream Man from Van Halen’s 1978 debut. Roth’s lyrics added humour and self-awareness, while Eddie’s guitar tone, described by engineer Ross Hogarth as “wide and mono, but still full of DNA from the past”, felt like a contemporary refresh of a classic sound.
For Wolfgang, though, the experience was about legacy. “It was really about putting Dad, Dave and Al back in that headspace,” he said. “It reminded them who they were as a band, and I think it showed everyone else too.”
A Different Kind Of Truth would also become Van Halen’s final studio album before Eddie’s death in 2020 and the group’s quiet disbandment that followed. Today, it stands as both a culmination and a rediscovery – a record born from the archives that proved Van Halen could still sound like no one else.
“It means a lot to me,” Wolfgang tells Noise11. “It’s something we all did together, and that’s what makes it special.”
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