Ten 13

Reviewed by:
David Peisner

Don’t cry for Sammy Hagar. Sure, he got unceremoniously bounced out of Van Halen, but he should thank them—that ship was sinking, anyway. It seemed for a while Sammy would just retreat to his ranch in Mexico, make tequila and bitch about it, but, as it goes with these things, his, um, muse returned. All told, Ten 13 isn’t a terrible effort, just a tad unnecessary. He opens by shredding his vocal chords across a handful of barely tolerable metallic rockers, but later shows the one good thing he got out of his VH days (besides all the groupies): an ear for melody. “The Message” is a reasonable facsimile of the sort of hook-filled arena-rock he was churning out with Van Halen, while “Deeper Kinda Love” and “Little Bit More” are lighter-flicking ballads that make us nostalgic for Skid Row’s “I Remember You.” And with his old band still scraping the bottom of the hair-metal barrel looking for a lead singer, where else can VH die-hards turn?

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