Forty years on and the seismic shift that was 5150 – Van Halen’s first album with Sammy Hagar replacing David Lee Roth and also my first introduction to the band still detonates with a force that few records in the hard rock canon can match.
The 2026 expanded edition, remastered directly from the original master tapes and overseen by the band’s longtime engineer Donn Landee, doesn’t seek to reinvent one of the most commercially dominant albums of 1986, but seeks to honour it, warts and all, and in doing so reveals just how staggeringly alive this record remains.
What the expanded edition offers beyond an outstanding remaster is a genuinely comprehensive document of the album and its era. CD2 gathers the singles campaign in full – edited versions…
Tag Archive: Van Halen
Fair Warning was such a dark, intense record that Van Halen almost had no choice but to lighten up on their next album, and 1982’s Diver Down is indeed much lighter than its predecessor. In many ways, it’s a return to the early albums, heavy on covers and party anthems, but where those records were rough and exuberant — they felt like the work of the world’s best bar band just made good, which is, of course, kind of what they were — this is undoubtedly the work of a finely honed band who has only grown tighter and heavier since their debut. As a band, they might be tight, but Diver Down is anything but tight. It’s a downright mess, barely clocking in at 31 minutes, cobbled together out of five covers, two minute-long instrumentals, and five new songs.
Van Halen’s catalogue is attaining further Balance with an expanded edition of the band’s final album recorded with second lead singer Sammy Hagar.
The band’s 10th studio album, released in 1995, reissued August 15 as a 2CD/2LP/Blu-ray set offering the remaster featured in 2023 box set The Collection II, three studio rarities, eight unreleased live tracks and a half-dozen music videos (including another live performance from the vault). Standalone 2CD and 2LP editions will be available as well; all vinyl features the complete album spread across three sides with an etching on the fourth. (Closing track “Feelin'” was omitted from original vinyl pressings.) The expanded set will follow the model of a similar package for 1991’s For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge, released last year.
Of all the early Van Halen records, Fair Warning often gets overlooked — partially because it’s a dark, strange beast, partially because it lacks any song as purely fun as the hits from the first three records. Because of that, there were no hits from Fair Warning that turned into radio anthems; only “Unchained” and, to a lesser extent, the grinding opener, “Mean Street,” rank among the group’s best-known songs, and they’re not as monumental as “And the Cradle Will Rock,” from the preceding album, Women and Children First. There’s a reason for that: this album ain’t a whole lotta fun. Fair Warning is the first Van Halen album that doesn’t feel like a party. This may be a reflection of the band’s relentless work schedule, it may be a reflection of the increasing…