Mammoth WVH

Mammoth WVH is the debut album, released on 11 June 2021 by EX1 Records. The name comes down to one fact the old note never mentioned: Mammoth was what Eddie and Alex Van Halen called their trio before it became Van Halen — before Michael Anthony and David Lee Roth arrived, back when Eddie was still the singer. Wolfgang Van Halen heard this from his father as a child and decided then that it would one day be the name of his own band. He took it with his father's blessing. Fourteen songs, 58 minutes, and he plays all of it himself: voice, guitar, bass, drums. The model he named was Dave Grohl's early Foo Fighters. Michael "Elvis" Baskette produced, at 5150 Studios — the room his father built. The opener "Mr. Ed" kept its demo title. He starts it with a harmonic tap and taps the solo too, which reminded him of his dad, so he called it that as a joke. "Don't Back Down" was demoed as "Sabbath"; the whole idea, he says, was a sports arena. "Think It Over" is straight pop-rock out of his fondness for Jimmy Eat World, and it was Eddie's favourite on the record — his dad just loved the energy of it, he says; it made him happy. On "Feel" and a couple of others he played his father's own hand-built guitar, the Frankenstein. The closer, "Distance," was never meant to be here. He had pulled it, intending to release it later. Then his father died in October 2020, he changed his mind, and it came out on its own that November. The response was so large that it was put back on the album as a bonus track — which is why the record is thirteen songs plus one. It reached number one on Mainstream Rock and was nominated for the Grammy for Best Rock Song. He donates all of his proceeds from it to Mr. Holland's Opus, the music education charity. The album entered the Billboard 200 at number twelve and topped the Hard Rock, Independent and Rock album charts.