Don’t let the finality of The End fool you. Despite the connotations of the title of Wolfgang Van Halen’s third and latest album as Mammoth, the hard rocker’s thrilling new era has only just begun.
When Guitar World catches up with him over Zoom, the musician – progeny of Eddie Van Halen, and a dynamic master-tapper in his own right – is riding high from leading his live band through a series of opening dates on Creed’s Summer of ’99 tour. It’s put the ever-rising act in front of huge arena crowds and had Van Halen sharing laughs backstage with his old Tremonti bandmate and Creed guitarist, Mark Tremonti.
Each night so far, Mammoth has electrified the masses with The End, the tapped-and-slapped ripper that roared to the top of the Billboard Mainstream Rock charts over the summer, and which is likewise affixed to one of the most memorably goofy-and-gory music videos of 2025 – featuring vampiric maulings aplenty and a scene where Wolf’s mom, Valerie Bertinelli, punches out a ghoul during a mid-concert bar brawl.
It’s been a fun few months, to say the least, but Van Halen also explains that The End arose out of a long period of tension and turmoil – its songs reflecting an existential dread informed by terrifying natural disasters and general anxiety.
As such, The End marks a highly personal exploration of identity, the weight of expectation, human connection and more. But despite that heady thematic whirl, The End – recorded at his late father’s 5150 Studios with longtime collaborator and producer Michael “Elvis” Baskette – remains a jubilantly rocking offering full of energized anthems, phase-glazed soloing, grungy melodicism and daringly funkified struts.
With the way I write, it’s very much a therapeutic release. Working those thoughts out is a way of calming the voices in my head and subduing my anxiety
It feels like you’re poking at some interconnected ideas on songs like The End, Same Old Song and Something New.
With the way I write, it’s very much a therapeutic release. Working those thoughts out is a way of calming the voices in my head and subduing my anxiety. I was working through a lot this time around. The vocals were recorded in January while we had everything in 5150 packed up and ready to go at any moment, because of the Los Angeles fires.
So there’s a lot of nerves, stress and anxiety there. I was thinking about all of my dad’s instruments and all of his belongings before I could even think about mine. We had a U-Haul truck filled with everything. It was tough to be creative in that environment, and I’m already a really anxious person, you know?
How close had the wildfires gotten?
At one point there were four separate fires within two miles of us – you’re just kind of sitting there watching the news and watching the LAFD be the incredible heroes they are. It was the winds that were the scariest, just how it would carry over miles. We were incredibly lucky. I know a lot of people who weren’t. It was a terrible time to be in the area.
How long did it take to get back into the recording sessions?
There were about two weeks where we couldn’t work more than an hour without getting some sort of alert – I didn’t have the brainpower to focus on it, because I was just like, “I need to make sure Frankenstein [Eddie Van Halen’s iconic parts guitar] is safe.”
Once stuff started to calm down, that’s when we really started slamming. There were two ideas I wanted to finish, but we didn’t have the time. They might show up on something else in the future.
Getting into some of the urgency that is on the record, there’s a really dramatic tempo pivot that kicks off the record, in the intro to One of a Kind.
I thought it’d be fun to really start this off with something different, almost like a jump-scare. You’re kind of lulled into this one thing, and then it explodes. But it was also fun to play with something that we hadn’t before, which was a dramatic time change.
It’s almost Sabbath – not the arrangement itself, but with how Sabbath get halfway through a song, and then they start chugging on something else and it’s badass. I also thought it was fun to tie that to the lyrical motifs of the song.
What’s the song about?
A lot of stuff on the album is about somebody losing themselves to some sort of negative influence. By the end of the song, that negative influence wins. That’s why I thought about ending on that really gross note – how it hits that last note and just feeds back for a little bit.
Something else that jumped out at listeners is the tapping intro to The End.
There’s a little callback in the intro to Source of Infection off of Van Halen’s OU812, where I think maybe Donn Landee says Take one, and then Dad does all this tapping stuff. I actually yelled that into the pickup of the guitar on The End, which was pretty funny.
But yeah… I had that idea for a bit, but it seemed a little over the top. I almost used it as a challenge of, like, “How can I make a song out of this?” It was one of the last ideas I pulled out for pre-pro. It was very inspiring and we had a lot of fun doing it.
People have been trying to sleuth out the slapping technique of your verse riff, too.
I really need to post a how-to video, but I haven’t had the time. But it’s literally just a slap bass part. And you’re plucking harmonics. Originally, the idea was to use it on the bass – like that one moment right before the first chorus, where it drops and the bass is playing it. But when I was showing my producer, Elvis Baskette, I was like, “I have this idea – imagine this on a bass,” and I did it on the guitar. Then he’s like, “Dude, you should do that on the guitar.”
Was it easier to throw that down on bass guitar or to transpose it onto Frankenstein?
On the guitar you almost have to lay back and be real soft with it, whereas with the bass you can dig in more, because obviously they’re bigger strings. But I found that the more I relaxed while doing it on guitar, the easier it was to get the sound I wanted.
An Instagram video you posted reveals you’ve got some electrical tape covering the D string, near the pickups.
That’s just a studio trick to make sure there’s no buzz. It was just to deaden any possible extraneous noise. Obviously, I don’t really have a problem doing the riff live now, but when you’re recording, you just want it to be as quiet as possible.
You’ve used Frankenstein on earlier Mammoth records. Have you learned anything in particular about how to harness the sound of that guitar over the years?
Not really. But any moment I have it in my hands… just being able to hold something that my dad had such a history with is nice, since my dad’s not around anymore. It’s a little bittersweet, but it’s a nice thing to have on the record with me. I think that’s why I try to bring it out on every record.
Do you have that same kind of connection with other pieces of gear at 5150?
Pretty much everything, yeah. I mean, just the fact I’m recording in 5150 is enough. But because Frankenstein is arguably one of the most famous instruments in music history, let alone guitars… the emotional and historical weight of it all is a lot to handle. You almost have to push it to the side and just enjoy the moment.
How defining a factor is your own signature EVH SA-126 on this record?
I have a ’burst – I believe it was the second prototype of the 126 – and that was the backbone of Mammoth II. Pretty much everything recorded on The End was the goldtop 126 I have now, other than the Frankenstein guitar parts. It’s just been so fun to have this instrument that Matt Bruck, Chip Ellis and I put together become the defining sound of what Mammoth has become.
How about the guitar amps?
Amp-wise, it’s pretty straightforward, and it’s what we’ve been using on tour, which is the 50 watts. I have the EVH 5150 III 6L6, and the specific one I have in the studio is the one I used for the Taylor Hawkins tribute shows [in 2022]. The cabinet, too.
I Really Wanna has some great phases running through it. Can I assume that’s a classic MXR in there?
I’m never really relying on an effect unless it’s something extremely specific – like on Happy, we used the MXR Rockman
Yeah! The other effects I used were just fuzzy sorts of vibes. We have this Foxx Tone pedal we used a lot. We always had a layer of Uni-Vibe… or maybe it was a Univox? Elvis is the guy for all the effects.
I’m never really relying on an effect unless it’s something extremely specific – like on Happy, we used the MXR Rockman [X100 Analog Tone Processor] for this clean lead over the chorus, so it really cuts through. And during The Spell there’s a lead thing starting in the second chorus where we’re doing wah, just to sweeten it up.
The Spell is driven by those funky sharp-ninths. Where did that song come up in the process?
I was thinking of Lenny Kravitz when I was writing that song, paired with a ’70s rock vibe. It felt vintage, because I’m doing what I guess people call the “Hendrix chord.” But I also think of the last note Dad hits on You Really Got Me – a lot of Van Halen songs end with that big note. But that’s definitely one of my favorite choruses on the record. I’m happy with that one.
You mentioned Happy earlier – that song feels like one of the larger vocal showcases on The End.
With that initial vocal melody in the verse, I was basically thinking of Failure and Nirvana. And in that headspace, I was like, “We should straight-up do a Smells Like Teen Spirit sort of thing and have the guitar solo be that vocal melody.”
That’s a criticism I never saw coming, honestly. Like, “He’s really selfish because he plays everything”
That song starts off with the lyric “I need control – it shows.” How could that line speak to the broader experience of making music on your own as Mammoth?
You could certainly make that comparison, but with the overarching theme of the record and anxiety, I think it’s more about trying to find your comfort zone amid chaos. That’s a criticism I never saw coming, honestly. Like, “He’s really selfish because he plays everything.”
I always thought it was just a fun thing for me to do. I’ve been in bands before where it’s been a collaborative effort, and it’s very much still a thing with me and my producer, Elvis. He helps me to avoid second-guessing myself, and he tells me when I should keep digging on something.
But a lot of people say things like, “Why don’t you just have other people on the record? It’ll deepen the sound,” or some real ethereal bullshit like, “You’ll give it more zhuzh if you have more people on it.” [Laughs] I don’t know… this is exactly how I want it, and I’m very happy with it.
The music world faced a great loss this summer with the death of Ozzy Osbourne. The day he passed, you performed his song Mama, I’m Coming Home in Hartford, Connecticut. How did Ozzy’s death impact you at that moment?
I think it was around three o’clock that day when we all looked at our phones and everybody went silent. It was really tough. We felt like we needed to do something, because how could you not? He affected everything we do, forever. It would’ve felt weird to go out there and try to play Crazy Train or Paranoid. Mama, I’m Coming Home felt like the right thing to do.
I was very nervous because I didn’t have all the lyrics memorized, and I didn’t even know how to play it. But we sat in the dressing room and listened to it over and over again. We played through it two-and-a-half times in soundcheck, and then we kept doing it acoustically backstage. I don’t even remember the rest of the show because I was so focused on Mama. I didn’t want to mess it up.
You didn’t play Crazy Train that night, but was that a formative song for you to work your hands around, as a developing guitarist?
Absolutely, which is why it was such an insane thing to be asked by Ozzy and Sharon to play it at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction he had last year. And knowing my dad’s connection with Sabbath… he would tell me all the time about that tour in 1978 where Van Halen opened for them. One of my dad’s favorite riffs of all time was Into the Void.
You had to pull out of Black Sabbath and Ozzy’s Back to the Beginning farewell concert in Birmingham. What would you have played? Was there a plan in place?
Not really. It was all very down-to-the-wire. The rehearsal schedule kept moving, because obviously it was an incredibly monumental thing to put together. I don’t put missing the show on anyone – it was a crazy thing to organize.
But the rehearsal dates for this tour kept looming over everything, and the rehearsal dates for Back to the Beginning kept changing. We just weren’t able to do both, and that really sucked, but I’m happy I was able to do the Hall of Fame thing, so at least I got to see Ozzy, give him a hug and talk to him a little bit.
Are you excited to transition from doing these six-song shows with Creed into playing the fuller, hour-and-a-half sets on your own headlining tour this fall?
This is going to be our craziest tour yet. Up until now, all the headline shows we’ve done have been mainly performance focused. We didn’t have much of a show built around it other than lights and a backdrop.
This time we’re bringing stuff we’ve never brought out before. And now that we have three albums of material to pick from, I’m excited to really cater the set wherever we go. It’s going to be a good time.
We don’t necessarily want to ruin a surprise, but are you going to be killing any vampires on stage during The End?
[Laughs] No, there’s not going to be much acting. Our show is just going to be a bit more souped up in comparison to what it’s been before.
- The End is out now via BMG.
- This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.
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