Van Halen Fair Warning Numbered Limited Edition Hybrid Stereo SACD

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Numbered, Limited Edition Hybrid SACD from Mobile Fidelity!

The song titles on Van Halen's aptly titled Fair Warning don't lie. The likes of "Unchained," "Mean Street," "Push Comes to Shove," "One Foot Out the Door," and more indicate the mood the band channels on its double-platinum 1981 record — the nastiest, darkest, and fiercest album of the group's storied career. For the fourth time in four years, Van Halen throws down the gauntlet to all challengers and emerges victorious.

Sourced from the original analog tapes and housed in mini-LP-style packaging, Mobile Fidelity's numbered-edition hybrid SACD plays with stunning clarity, dynamics, and immediacy. Taking a more controlled approach in the studio and still completing everything in less than two weeks, Van Halen and producer Ted Templeman relied on studio amplifiers to direct the sound. Further diverging from the live-on-the-floor approach of its earlier albums, the ensemble also employed overdubs to great effect. The result: Dense, stacked architecture that underlines the hard-hitting tenor of the songs — and which comes alive like never before on this reference reissue.

The cover art of Fair Warning speaks to the music within. Isolated frames from Kurelek's childhood-inspired work — including a man bashing his head into a brick wall, a guy pinning down an adversary as he delivers bare-fist blows to his face and others watch with apparent glee, a boy tied down on a conveyer belt and being sent through the equivalent of a meat saw — adorn the front and back panels. The sunnier visual disposition of Van Halen's prior efforts gives way to something sinister and tortured. The band members, too, are visually depicted not in glamorous shots but in a serious black-and-white portrait in which the quartet is clad in black leather jackets.