Fair Warning by Van Halen

Fair Warning, Van Halen's fourth album, came out on Warner Bros. on April 29, 1981, and it's a surly, bruising record, the sound of the party running late. Ted Templeman produced it at Sunset Sound, and Eddie Van Halen's guitar is the whole weather system, snarling, squealing and chopping, with Alex Van Halen and Michael Anthony pounding away underneath and David Lee Roth hollering on top.

"Unchained" is the monster, a huge, lurching riff that rock radio has never let go of, and "Mean Street" slinks in off the curb looking for trouble. "So This Is Love?" was the single, and it stalled just short of the Hot 100. The album still went to number 5 on the Billboard 200 and moved over two million units in America, though that made it the slowest seller of the Roth era, and most critics liked it just fine.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.