{"id":3679,"date":"2021-06-30T13:50:14","date_gmt":"2021-06-30T18:50:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/read.streamapse.com\/?p=3679"},"modified":"2021-06-30T13:50:14","modified_gmt":"2021-06-30T18:50:14","slug":"its-impossible-to-ignore-where-im-from-so-i-wanted-to-touch-on-the-history-mammoth-wvh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/?p=3679","title":{"rendered":"It\u2019s Impossible To Ignore Where I\u2019m From, So I Wanted To Touch On The History – Mammoth WVH"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Wolfgang Van Halen joined his dad and uncle\u2019s legendary and eponymous rock band at age 15, he quickly proved himself as a bass prodigy in a band of virtuosos. While on tour with Van Halen in 2015, he began composing songs for what would become his solo debut, Mammoth WVH\u2014an album on which he plays all the instruments and performs all the vocals. \u201cIt was a labor of love,\u201d he tells Apple Music. \u201cIt was so much fun to creatively explore and have no bounds.\u201d It\u2019s no coincidence that Mammoth was the moniker Van Halen went by before they changed their name in the mid-70s. Wolfgang chose it to maintain a musical connection to his dad, who passed in 2020. \u201cIt\u2019s impossible to ignore where I\u2019m from, so I wanted to touch on the history while taking it in my own direction,\u201d he says. \u201cPlus, I\u2019ve always loved the name. When my dad told me the story, I was like, \u2018I want to call my own band that when I grow up.\u201d Below, he discusses each track.<\/p>\n

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#StreamMammothWVH<\/strong><\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cMr. Ed\u201d
\n\u201cContrary to the title, this lyrically has nothing to do with dad. It was the demo title because I harmonically tap the intro, and it just kind of stuck around. It\u2019s a tongue-in-cheek, funny title for the song, so even after the lyrics were done I decided to keep it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHorribly Right\u201d
\n\u201cThis is a song I wrote in New York when we had a week off on the 2015 Van Halen tour. Rather than going home, I stayed in my hotel and made the demo that became this song. It was really fun to take a quick break from tour and just lock myself in my room and write. The title comes from the punchline of a story that my producer was telling me\u2014something like, \u2018If we get there, things will have to go horribly right for us.\u2019 I just thought it fit the vibe of the song.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cEpiphany\u201d
\n\u201cI view this as one of the core-sounding songs. It\u2019s kind of like the center of what the band is really about. Just like \u2018Mr. Ed,\u2019 \u2018Epiphany\u2019 was the demo title because I was just cleaning my kitchen when the melody came to me. I ran upstairs, but instead of recording the idea on my phone, I went straight to Logic and made a demo. And the song came out pretty similar to that demo, so I kept the title.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDon’t Back Down\u201d
\n\u201cI like to think of this one as the fight song. It’s the song you throw on when you want your team to just beat the shit out of the other team. It really has that galloping, Black Sabbath sort of vibe\u2014you can hear it with the riff and the fuzz tone on the guitars. It\u2019s a really fun, balls to the wall rocker.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cResolve\u201d
\n\u201cThis one is super different from the rest of the album\u2014a little bit to the left of the main sound. The bass is grooving the whole time, and it rarely changes. It\u2019s just locked in a groove with the drums. But it\u2019s a softer, more melodic kind of groovy song\u2014very vocal heavy. It\u2019s another one I wrote on the 2015 Van Halen tour, this time in the back of the bus.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019ll Be the One\u201d
\n\u201cThis is a shorter song with a dance drumbeat that I really love. I was kind of cheeky with the intro on this one\u2014you don\u2019t really know where the one is, and the drums come in on the up-beat. So when it finally hits, you\u2019re kind of playing catch up and you don\u2019t really start to get it until the vocals come in. It kind of forces you to pay attention. The solo was done with a talk box that I\u2019d never used before. I was so bad at it that I had to tape my nose because I kept breathing into the mic while I was doing it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMammoth\u201d
\n\u201cI love the self-titled debut with the self-titled song\u2014that triple hit. I was definitely following Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden with this idea. I think Green Day did it, too. Like \u2018Epiphany,\u2019 I feel this is the core sound of the band, which is why the name of the song is also the name of the band and the album. It\u2019s also at the center of the album. It\u2019s a really personal song about anxiety and depression and finding your way out of it\u2014or at least attempting to.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cCircles\u201d
\n\u201cThis is probably the most different song on the whole album. It\u2019s a really fun one that came together during the recording process. It\u2019s got a lot of layers, but it\u2019s primarily rooted in kind of an acoustic rhythm, and I really enjoy how dark and gloomy the song is. I\u2019m also a big fan of vocal harmonies, so it was fun to really go nuts on this one. I think every single line is harmonized throughout the verse, except for the little bridge.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Big Picture\u201d
\n\u201cThe demo title for this one was \u2018Queens,\u2019 because I\u2019m a big Queens of the Stone Age fan and this very much has that fuzzy Queens vibe. It\u2019s almost like Queens and Alice In Chains had a baby. I\u2019m a big fan of bendy riffs, and this has a super bendy one, but my favorite part is the bridge, with the layered harmonies.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThink it Over\u201d
\n\u201cThis was my dad\u2019s favorite song on the album. It\u2019s really just a straight-up pop song that really echoes the bands I grew up on, like Blink-182 and Jimmy Eat World. It has that pop sensibility, but it\u2019s still very much within the Mammoth sound. My dad called my solo a \u2018George Harrison solo,\u2019 which was one of my favorite compliments he gave me. It\u2019s not a flashy solo, but melodically it perfectly fits the song.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re to Blame\u201d
\n\u201cThis has a very Rage Against the Machine or Audioslave kind of riff and a really fun solo. Most of the songs don\u2019t really have too many solos, maybe some little leads here and there. When it comes to solos, I always do it for the song. When you\u2019re part of a band, you maybe want to show off when you\u2019re playing just one instrument. But when you\u2019re playing everything, you kind of look like an asshole if you\u2019re trying to show off on every instrument. It really makes you respect the songwriting process and write the best song rather than be like, \u2018Hey, I did that!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFeel\u201d
\n\u201cThe first time I posted it on my Instagram was in like 2015, so it’s crazy to have it finally coming out. For one of the guitar tracks, I played my dad\u2019s original Frankenstein guitar. I played it on \u2018Mammoth\u2019 as well. When he pulled it out, he kind of noodled with it for a second and then sort of haphazardly tossed it on to the couch and everyone in the room just gasped. To him, it\u2019s just a piece of junk he put together, but to us it\u2019s the most recognizable guitar in music history.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cStone\u201d
\n\u201cThe intention with this one was to make an epic finale. It\u2019s a bit longer, over six minutes, and it\u2019s almost like Nine Inch Nails and Black Sabbath had a baby. It has that kind of darker, sludgy vibe.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDistance\u201d
\n\u201cThis is a bonus track. I originally put this out for Pop and had all the proceeds go to his favorite charity, Mr. Holland\u2019s Opus Foundation, but after the crazy success that it saw, we felt like it was a good idea to have it on the album. Dad had been up and down so much health-wise over the years, and emotionally it was a tough thing to go through. I wrote this song imagining what it would be like to be without him, and it ended up being really poignant. It\u2019s really about loss, and I think anybody can relate to that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When Wolfgang Van Halen joined his dad and uncle\u2019s legendary and eponymous rock band at age 15, he quickly proved himself as a bass prodigy in a band of virtuosos. While on tour with Van Halen in 2015, he began composing songs for what would become his solo debut, Mammoth WVH\u2014an album on which he […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3681,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[285,559,560,561,562,538,563],"class_list":["post-3679","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-conversations","tag-history","tag-ignore","tag-impossible","tag-mammoth","tag-touch","tag-wanted","tag-where"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3679","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3679"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3679\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3681"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}