10 Hard Rock Albums Everyone Forgets About

There's always been a lingering question as to whether Van Halen even belongs in the category of metal music all of the time. Even though their first records always had metal's trademark intensity, the tone was a lot more positive than any other metal that had come before, seeming more like a non stop party than a headbanging fest most of the time. They did have that sort of darkness lying around though, and Women and Children First is where they really started to go off the rails.

While this marks the first time that Eddie started to fully incorporate a keyboard into the mix, the production on this record is a lot more intense than any other Van Halen record before it, turning the synthesized sounds of And the Cradle Will Rock into something a lot heavier that it would sound like on paper. Outside of the normal party jams that turn up on their other projects, there are a lot more metal adjacent moments to be found here, like the Motorhead level of speed on Loss of Control or even the few seconds of Tora Tora that sports the best Black Sabbath riff not written by Tony Iommi.

There are even a few times where the record slows down that never let up on the intensity, from the ramshackle sounds of Take Your Whiskey Home and the more epic size of a song like In a Simple Rhyme. Their debut may have given us Van Halen's signature sound, but Women and Children First was proof that they didn't need a signature sound to wow us.