Professional ratings
Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic
The A.V. Club	B
Boston Herald	A−
Chicago Tribune
Entertainment Weekly	A−
The Guardian
Rolling Stone
Spin	7/10
Sputnikmusic
USA Today

A Different Kind of Truth is the twelfth studio album by American hard rock band Van Halen. Released on February 7, 2012, by Interscope Records, the record is Van Halen's first full-length album of studio material with former lead singer David Lee Roth since 1984. Likewise, it is Van Halen's first studio album since 1998's Van Halen III. It is the first to feature Eddie Van Halen's son Wolfgang on bass guitar, replacing Michael Anthony, who had played bass on all of Van Halen's previous albums.

A Different Kind of Truth was recorded at Henson Recording Studios and Eddie Van Halen's own 5150 Studios and produced by John Shanks. Seven of the album's thirteen songs are musically re-worked and lyrically re-written songs that had been demoed in the late-1970s/early 1980s, but never officially released. The album received positive reviews upon release, with several writers referring to it as a return to form, and multiple publications ranked it as one of the best albums of 2012. It was also a commercial success, debuting in the top ten on numerous record charts. It debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 and, by the end of 2012, had sold in excess of 411,000 copies in the United States alone. The album was promoted with an arena tour.

In 2007, Van Halen reunited with original lead singer David Lee Roth – who had left the band in April 1985, at the peak of their global popularity – for a North American Tour. This tour added bassist Wolfgang Van Halen, the then-16-year-old son of guitarist Eddie Van Halen and actress Valerie Bertinelli, forcing out original bassist Michael Anthony, who would go on to form Chickenfoot with Van Halen's second lead singer, Sammy Hagar. The reunion tour consisted of 74 shows from September 2007 to June 2008, and became the band's highest grossing tour of its thirty-year history, earning over $93 million. Eddie Van Halen was reluctant about the possibility of recording new material with Roth in 2009, citing the poor reaction to the three new songs recorded with Hagar for the 2004 compilation Best of Both Worlds. After Wolfgang became enthusiastic about recording a new Van Halen album, Eddie's opinion changed: "We're doing this [album] for us."

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Wikipedia