For Unlawful Carnal Know...

When I first heard the single Poundcake, it was my introduction to Los Angeles's rock band Van Halen. EddieVan Halen is such a distinctive guitar player and this enables Van Halen to stand out from many otherrock bands. My personal favourites are Poundcake, Runaround and Man on a mission. This album is withtheir second lead singer Sammy Hagar and if you like this album it's well worth searching out their earlier albumswith David Lee Roth.

i was completely impressed at how good a band VH are. you know what its like, walking around playing songs in your head over and over again in a joyfully obsessive way. the songs on that DVD were definitely the soundtrack to the winter of 2014/15. now just on the cusp of springtime I have gone from possessing no VH albums to acquiring 10 of their best ones. this particular album sees a return to a harder edged sound that was slightly lost on OU812 but was there on 5150. when I say harder edged I don't mean like heavy metal. I recently saw angus young describe them as a pop band-he was right. VH are a heavy pop band! if you decide to explore my joy don't get sucked into the whole dave was better than Sammy/Sammy was better than dave bulls*** debate because really the band is called Van Halen and the consistency of the quality lies with eddie and alex-its their band. 10/10

Apparently, someone told Sammy that an acronym of "For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge" was the true origin of the four-letter word. That aside, it`s a really poor title; even I would have to admit that if VH have a weakness, it is their album titles (apart from their third and fourth albums). I remember buying this on the day of release, after months of fevered, teenage anticipation. In those days you had to wait, no websites around with stolen excerpts to give you any idea what would be coming; although the album opener "Poundcake" was released as a single beforehand and that was more than enough to keep me very interested.That is a cracking opener; Eddie uses a drill for chrissakes! Near his then-new Peavey Wolfgang! Sammy`s words work better on this album than any other with VH...maybe he was more settled by this album? But they did take a while over this release, so maybe the other band members had a chance to throw out his first batch of pure cheese and he came back with something a bit more grown-up. Some of the songs, like "Judgement Day" and "Pleasure Dome" are lyrically interesting, almost deep, and Eddie explores some new ideas and tricks too, along with the magnificence that we would expect from probably the greatest living guitarist. There are a couple of real clunkers, stinkers even, like "In `N` Out", and "Spanked" (which would make my top three of bad VH songs - there are only about five poor songs on all the records put together, after all), but there`s enough to compensate elsewhere. "Spanked" truly is horrid though.My favourites are obviously "Poundcake", but "The Dream Is Over" and "Top Of The World" (which picks up the riff that ends the DLR-era classic "Jump") are great feel-good songs. "Right Now" has been overplayed but it`s dramatic stuff and instead of a synth, it`s a real piano that stars. Eddie had been noodling around with "316" for a while before he gave it a title (son Wolfgang`s birthday, March 16th) and it`s lovely.All in all a very good record, heavier than the two preceding releases, and there are signs of the seriousness which really showed its face on the follow-up album, "Balance".

I remember getting this album on vinyl and listening to it each and every night for a whole month because it was so cool.It's still cool. Brilliant musicians made it. They were the best at their musicianship those days and they're still the best. It's a shame Eddie and Sammy spend too much time saying unkind things about each other in the press nowadays but those days they were at the top and completed each other. If you're into only the best melodic hard rock and you still don't have this album, get it!

pleased to have with my collection.