VAN  HALEN will release its first-ever live album to feature original singer David Lee Roth. Recorded on June 21, 2013 at the famed Tokyo Dome in Tokyo, Japan, “Tokyo Dome Live In Concert” includes 23 songs, spanning all seven of the band’s albums with Roth. It will be released as a double CD; four-LP set on 180-gram vinyl; and digitally beginning March 31, 2015.

VAN HALEN reinvented the sound of hard rock in 1978 with its influential and wildly successful eponymous debut album and then achieved ever greater success six years later with 1984. Both albums would define a generation while selling more than 10 million copies each in the U.S. alone to earn diamond-certification from the RIAA. The band recently went back to the original analog tapes and remastered both of these landmark albums — “Van Halen” and “1984” — which are now also set for release on March 31, 2015 through Warner Bros. Records.

Considered one of the greatest debut albums in rock history, “Van Halen” took the music world by storm in 1978 with an 11-song manifesto that features some of rock radio’s most played songs of all time and scorching concert staples like “Runnin’ With The Devil”, “Ain’t Talkin’ ‘Bout Love”, “Jamie’s Cryin'”, the band’s signature cover of THE KINKS‘ “You Really Got Me”, and Eddie Van Halen‘s finger-tapping tour de force, “Eruption”. Six years and five albums later, VAN HALEN had become one of the biggest bands in the world around the release of “1984”, which includes a number of the band’s most legendary songs such as the #1 hit “Jump”, “Panama” and “Hot For Teacher”.

Mastering engineer Chris Bellman, who remastered the original albums at Bernie Grundman Mastering Studios, was enlisted for these new versions. In order to produce the original sound the band intended, Bellman cut straight from the quarter-inch tapes for CD; for 180-gram vinyl; and for the digital versions. Newly mastered versions of “Diver Down”, “Women And Children First”, “Van Halen II” and “Fair Warning” are now being cut (for CD, for vinyl, and for digital) for release later in spring.

“Tokyo Dome Live In Concert” features an electrifying performance by singer David Lee Roth, guitarist Eddie Van Halen, drummer Alex Van Halen, and bassist Wolfgang Van Halen. Mixed by award-winning engineer and mixer Bob Clearmountain (THE ROLLING STONES, BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN, ROXY MUSIC, NINE INCH NAILS, and many more), and mastered by Chris Bellman, the album features such classic anthems as “Dance The Night Away”, “Beautiful Girls”, “And The Cradle Will Rock…”, “Unchained” and “Everybody Wants Some!!”, as well as blistering versions of “Tattoo”, “She’s The Woman” and “China Town” from the group’s most recent studio album, “A Different Kind Of Truth”.

A deluxe collection featuring “Tokyo Dome Live In Concert” and the newly remastered “Van Halen” and “1984” albums, as both a four-CD set and a six-LP vinyl set in special packaging, will also be available March 31.

According to Van Halen News Desk, the front and back covers of “Tokyo Dome Live In Concert” feature famous paintings by Adolf Mouron Cassandre. Roth loves the art deco era, and chose Cassandre‘s painting of the SS Normandie for the front cover, continuing with the traveling theme that started with the locomotive on “A Different Kind Of Truth”. The back cover is similar to Cassandre‘s painting of the French cruise-liner L’Atlantique.

“Tokyo Dome Live In Concert” track listing:

01. Unchained
02. Runnin’ With The Devil
03. She’s The Woman
04. I’m The One
05. Tattoo
06. Everybody Wants Some!!
07. Somebody Get Me A Doctor
08. China Town
09. Hear About It Later
10. (Oh) Pretty Woman
11. Me & You (Drum Solo)
12. You Really Got Me
13. Dance The Night Away
14. I’ll Wait
15. Cradle Will Rock
16. Hot For Teacher
17. Women In Love
18. Romeo Delight
19. Mean Street
20. Beautiful Girls
21. Ice Cream Man
22. Panama
23. Eruption (Guitar Solo)
24. Ain’t Talkin’ ‘Bout Love
25. Jump

The songs “Panama” and “Runnin’ With The Devil” from “Tokyo Dome Live In Concert” can be streamed below.

“Amen”, the new video from HALESTORM, can be seen below. The track is taken from the band’s upcoming album, “Into The Wild Life”, which is due out on April 14.

In a recent interview with 100.3 The X Rocks, HALESTORM singer Lzzy Hale called the entire recording process “very freeing.”

She said, “We decided to throw away everything that the previous two records made us feel comfortable and safe. We threw caution to the wind and said, ‘We’re just gonna chase after whatever gets us excited.’ And we made an actual album.”

The band recorded the set in Nashville — where Hale says it was “isolated” with few distractions — aside from “the occasional beer run.”

The new album, comes on heels of HALESTORM‘s Grammy-winning 2012 sophomore release, “The Strange Case Of…”

Around that time Hale told The Pulse Of Radio that the writing process for “The Strange Case Of…” was split in two distinct halves. “We went into it right off the road, so the first half of the record that we wrote was very — we were writing some of the most aggressive songs that we’ve ever written, I’m screaming my head off, you know,” she said. “And then halfway through, started writing some of the most personal songs that, you know, we’ve ever written, and some things that I’ve never talked about before, and it’s interesting — there’s two definite sides and very real sides to what we do and who I am.”

HALESTORM has been touring with Eric Church and will hit the road with THE PRETTY RECKLESS in April.

Published by rbtaleman

Heavy metal (fiend/friend?) Writer, frustrat(or), frustrat(ee), decorated U.S. Navy veteran, Husband(twice), father(three times), grandfather(of seven), FM radio veteran, Concertgoer, music collector, muscle car aficianado. Grown up since five. Child since 45. View all posts by rbtaleman