A Different Kind of Truth

A Different Kind of Truth is the twelfth studio album by American rock band Van Halen. Released on February 7, 2012, by Interscope Records, this is Van Halen's only studio album on Interscope and its first album of studio material with lead singer David Lee Roth since 1984. Likewise, A Different Kind of Truth was Van Halen's first studio album since 1998's Van Halen III, as well as their only studio album recorded without bassist Michael Anthony, who had played bass on all of the band's previous albums; Eddie Van Halen's son Wolfgang replaced Anthony for the album, making this his only studio album with the band. It would also be Van Halen's final studio album before Eddie's death and the group's subsequent disbandment in 2020.

A Different Kind of Truth was recorded at Henson Recording Studios and Eddie Van Halen's own 5150 Studios and produced by John Shanks. Seven of the album's 13 songs are musically re-worked and lyrically re-written songs that had been demoed in the late-1970s/early 1980s, but never officially released. The album received positive reviews upon release, with several writers referring to it as a return to form, and multiple publications ranked it as one of the best albums of 2012. It was also a commercial success, debuting in the top ten on numerous record charts. It debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 and, by the end of 2012, had sold in excess of 411,000 copies in the United States alone. The album was promoted with an arena tour.

In 2007, Van Halen reunited with original lead singer David Lee Roth – who had left the band in April 1985, at the peak of their global popularity – for a North American Tour. This tour added bassist Wolfgang Van Halen, the then-16-year-old son of guitarist Eddie Van Halen and actress Valerie Bertinelli, in place of former bassist Michael Anthony, who would go on to form both Chickenfoot and Sammy Hagar and the Circle with Van Halen's second lead singer, Sammy Hagar. The reunion tour consisted of 74 shows from September 2007 to June 2008, and became the band's highest-grossing tour of its thirty-year history, earning over $93 million. Eddie Van Halen was reluctant about the possibility of recording new material with Roth in 2009, citing the poor reaction to the three new songs recorded with Hagar for the 2004 compilation Best of Both Worlds. After Wolfgang became enthusiastic about recording a new Van Halen album, Eddie's opinion changed: "We're doing this [album] for us."

Eddie, Wolfgang, and Alex Van Halen began jam sessions at the former's 5150 Studios three months after the tour's completion. During this time, Wolfgang discovered rough, unreleased demos from the band's archives. After listening to these and believing they had potential, he brought them to Alex and Eddie to rework and refine. The first of these tracks, "She's the Woman", was completed by August 2009. It had originally been demoed by the band in the mid-1970s. Roth decided to join the project after hearing this song, as well as two other reworked tracks: "Let's Get Rockin'" – later renamed "Outta Space" – and "Bullethead". The demos also included songs originating from an attempted 2000 reunion album with Roth.

Wolfgang's original intention with the album was to create a collection of previously released "B-sides". According to Eddie, this would mean deep album tracks, such as "Drop Dead Legs" and "Girl Gone Bad", along with three reworked demos, with Eddie saying: "It would [have been] a record of our more hardcore songs and none of the pop stuff. That was the initial plan, but the deeper we dug, the more we found. At the same time I was writing new songs. Dave got very excited about that. We all did. We ended up recording demos for 35 songs." After deliberating over whether to self-produce the album or choose a producer from a list that included Rick Rubin and Pat Leonard (who had involvement on their scrapped 1999 album with Gary Cherone), Roth suggested John Shanks. Shanks liked the first three songs and agreed to produce the album, working alongside Wolfgang to pick the demos that would be developed into the album's tracks. While all of Van Halen's albums since 1984 had been produced inside 5150, Roth persuaded the band to work at Henson Recording Studios, where he had been recording for more than a decade.

"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'. I thought that recording those old songs would make 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."

By mid-January 2011, the band had moved into Henson Studios with Shanks, staff engineer Martin Cooke and engineer Paul David Hager. The band would record music for 12 hours a day, five days a week, with Roth coming in to track his vocals at night. The instrumental tracks were completed within three weeks. Eddie said that he was relieved to relinquish some of the production work to his son, who was considered by the band to be acting in a co-production role: frequently talking to Shanks, being consulted by his father on the musical direction and developing the songs. Along with creating new bits, such as a new breakdown on "She's the Woman"—as the original had ended up being used on Fair Warning's (1981) "Mean Street"—and an arrangement for "Stay Frosty". Wolfgang improvised some bass sections, such as the capo intro to "China Town".

By the end of March 2011, the band returned to finish the record at 5150 with engineer Ross Hogarth. Most of the work at 5150 was for guitars and bass, as Eddie "couldn't hear them at Henson the way I'm used to." Both he and Hogarth felt that attempts at mixing there were not progressing due to sound-quality issues. Eddie attributed this to the tape machines at Henson, claiming that: "Everything ended up sounding like it had a sock over it." The final mix took place over a period of six weeks in the summer of 2011, with each song taking a day to mix. Hogarth indicated that because the process was done at a mixing console, "We couldn't move on to the next song until a mix had been approved by everyone and could go off the desk." Hogarth would start with the drums, adding bass and guitar to finish a backing track, which would be complemented with multing (hiving off different sections of a given part to different tracks) and parallel compression. It was then finished by bringing in Roth's vocals, backing vocals, and further details such as ad libs, screams, and guitar solos.