Released: 2021

Genres: Power Pop, Alternative Rock

The Musiquarium’s Van Weezer Review Score: 5 out of 10

When Weezer announced Van Weezer, I was foolish enough to believe that the band would sidestep the usual pop vomit that they’ve been spewing out for most of the past two decades with a love letter to metal music. Considering that the gatefold to their debut album showed a poster of Judas Priest’s British Steel, along with the chunky power chords of their early works, metal music was a big influence on Weezer’s metallic power pop. The band had just released OK Human to the best reviews they’ve gotten in years (though it was far from a classic), but it signalled some hope for the future of the band. Maybe the 2020s would be Weezer’s decade… Oh, how I was wrong.

Van Weezer is an utter embarrassment (and not of riches); this is definitely one of Weezer’s five worst albums. Hero sounds like the kind of pop punk song you’d hear in some long-forgotten 2000s teen sex comedy. All the Good Ones could have fit on Pacific Daydream, which is not a compliment at all. Blue Dream rips off Ozzy Osbourne’s Crazy Train, defecating and pissing all over it in the process.

The only song here that didn’t make me want to punch Rivers Cuomo in the proverbial face was Precious Metal Girl, only because it reminded me faintly of Butterfly, one of the most beautiful songs of the 1990s, back when Cuomo wrote from the heart and not from the insecure desire to be accepted by everybody. How he went from writing The Blue Album and Pinkerton to this is just sad.

Leave it to Weezer to ruin a nod to Van Halen.

For credit breakdowns and historic release details, view Weezer on Discogs.

Back to the 2021 Album Guide or the Weezer Reviews page.

Written by Brett Nippard