Def Leppard

It's a weird thing. When I look at myself, my friends and acquaintances there are two kinds of 'fans' concerning Def Leppard. There are those who swear by 'On Through the Night' & 'High 'n' Dry' and then there's the Pyromania-Hysteria fans (me & about half of my friends). I myself never had issues with a rockband becoming an arena rock act, as long as the songs are great. Heck, 'Slippery When Wet' (Bon Jovi) is one of my all time fave albums.

Anyway, for most of us Def Leppard disappeared off radar around the time the very, very mediocre 'Adrenalize' was released back in 1992, a mediocre album we had to wait 5 years for! From time to time afterwards we'd hear a new Leppard song, somewhere, never really grabbing us. I can even recall a song called 'Go' back in 2008 which sounded more like Limp Bizkit than Leppard. Atrocious! But anyway. Onward to 2015.

I heard 'Let's Go' and, well, damn, it actually reminded me of how cool Leppard once were (1983-1987) This is a great song actually! Those layered vocals, interesting song structure, catchy. Yeah, just a great song! Even the lead guitar sound reminded me of Extreme during their Three Sides era. So, not much to complain, eh.

So I checked out the album and there's truly a lot of fun stuff happening! I admit, not all songs are great but a few stand out. 'Dangerous' is another song which takes you back to eighties, Pyromania in particular. 'Invincible' is an interesting track. It's the kind of song I would have loved to band to have released back in 1992 instead of that godawful 'Let's Get Rocked'. 'Invincible' is how Leppard SHOULD have entered the nineties.

Also 'All Time High' is worth mentioning even though that one sounds more like 1986-1988 era Bon Jovi, which in my book is not a bad thing. Even the vocals have a John Francis Bongiovi touch!

Then there's the odd 'Sea Of Love' which in the verses could remind you of 'Sweet Home Alabama' (Lynyrd Skynyrd) but with a cheesy chorus which sounds like a rip-off from 'Sowing The Seeds Of Love' (Tears For Fears) And there's 'Broken N' Broken Hearted' which could have been a song from any Kiss album in the 1984-1989 era. Yes, really, this is a Kiss song!

'Battle Of My Own' pays a LOT of tribute to Led Zeppelin. It makes me want to put on 'Four Sticks' the whole time. I'm not sure what to think of 'Energized' though. It has some potential but the computerbeats and oohaah backing vocals don't really do it for me.

It's filler material like 'We Belong' (meandering), 'Blind Faith' (Bon Jovi doing Soundgarden with a Beatles touch) and several others which drag it down a bit. The album could've done with about 4 or 5 songs less to be honest (all non-rocking songs and the earlier mentioned fillers) and it would have been quite an entertaining rock album. Hell, if they had released the 5 songs (which I shall name later on as stand-outs) as an EP, it probably would've gone down as their best release since... 1987.

As it is now it's a mixed bag with truly a few hidden gems, either reliving their own glorious past, or paying VERY obvious tribute to other bands.

Stand out songs:
- Let's Go
- Dangerous
- Invincible
- All Time High
- Broke 'n' Brokenhearted

fascinating:
- Energized
- Battle of My Own

A self titled album either comes at two points in a career. It can be the first release, a strong declaration of a band’s identity, loudly yelling “HERE WE ARE! THIS IS WHO I AM!” It can also signal a reinvention, or reestablishment of who you are after a rocky time in a band’s identity, such as with Metallica or (as a lesser known example) Flotsam and Jetsam. Def Leppard was certainly aiming for the latter sort with their 2015, which came 7 years after “Songs from the Sparkle Lounge.” This album seems to want to declare that they are back on track after a rocky era that started with the 90s, during which they faced turmoil due to both the loss of songwriter and guitarist Steve Clark as well as being cast off for grunge metal when glam fell out of style. While they did bounce back from Rick Allen losing an arm, it was harder to recover in the 90s, especially when they released the grunge and alt tinged Slang in 1996. So were they able to recapture the anthemic glam energy from their biggest hits?

On their first single and lead track, Let’s Go, they try. The song leads with a braggadocious chanting of “do you really want to do this now” which doesn’t sound too threatening from a band of 60 year old's. This gives way to a chant of “Let’s Go” which should not be confused with the track “Go” from Sparkle Lounge, a song that yelled at you to “just GO” like a radio Disney version of Pantera’s Walk. Singer Joe Eliott sings this song quietly and listlessly, this entire song seeming like an obligation. They’re much more comfortable with smoother pop rock in the vein of modern day Bon Jovi, which is what they ease into for the rest of the album. Dangerous is that vein of pop rock, and it shows a much more comfortable Def Leppard. Joe isn’t forcing himself into a bark, but rather a smoother croon, and it fits him. Most of the other tracks on this album either fall into this sort of track, or acoustic ballads (with a mild tinge of country to them, like modern Europe albums). These songs show the band being a lot more comfortable, but they blend together a bit, and the songs are mostly cozy tinged songs about love and relationships that work. The other standout track, the third track Man Enough, stands out for a bass groove that is certainly aping Another One Bites the Dust, but at least this makes it stand out.

Instrumentally, the drums do their job, as a simple driving drum beat is all these pop rock songs need. The bass is there, but nothing amazing, and the guitars really are just window dressing that fall in the background. It’s wild to think that Vivian Campbell is in this band but you can rarely hear his imprints, but he’s really just there to play the simple licks Def Leppard is known for, and give some support to Joe. As much as I would love to see him play some tougher, ballsier riffs like his Dio days, he’d probably get blank looks from his bandmates, and I suppose he can just save those for Last in Line (though I remember even fewer of that project’s songs).

In all, this album gets its job done as a pop rock album, but it doesn’t have the raucousness or pounding, arena shaking rock side those earlier albums did. It immediately discards that energy the moment Let’s Go ends. And for an album that seems to want to declare WE ARE DEF LEPPARD, it doesn’t do much to follow the formula of Pyromania and Hysteria, which had a bigger ratio of those hair metal bops that you may loath, but can’t get out of your head. This album also falls into the trap of a modern day rock album that, once the promotion period is done, will vanish from setlists the same way about 2/3rds of the album’s tracks vanished from my memory. I’d be shocked if any radio stations even played Let’s Go, which is too new for classic rock, too wimpy for hard rock stations, and not even a fit for those stations that somehow mix in a few classic rock songs with more contemporary pop. On top of that, no one is going to be playing Let’s Go or Energized at the strip joints. If you try to play this album for that cougar who crushed on Joe and Phil, she’ll look at you funny before asking you to just play Photograph.

As age progressed and the 40 year mark of Def Leppard's longstanding career as NWOBHM adherents, turned 80s hair rock icons, turned trend-hoppers, turned nostalgia hounds drew near, a strong contingent of their old school fan base had been scratching their heads for a fair while. Be this as it may, it could also be safely assumed that much of said crowd that even knew said band actually recorded an album titled On Through The Night had reached the acceptance portion of the Kübler-Ross stages of grief and were at peace with the notion that the best that one could hope for out of these idea-starved Britons was another retread of the Hysteria model that originally made them big sellers in the late 80s. Sadly even this proved to be wishful thinking depending on what album in this band's recent history is under consideration, with contenders for the absolute nadir of directionless commercial pandering being the 90s flop Slang and the dreadful predecessor to the album now under consideration Songs From The Sparkle Lounge.

It may seem a bit late in the game for an outfit like this to actually bother with releasing an eponymously titled album, but the resulting Def Leppard manages to be a fitting one at that, primarily because it presents this band for what they actually are at present, namely a grab-bag of commercial pop and 80s AOR influences that put together albums that have all the consistency of a various artists compilation. It manages to claw it's way out of the pandering department by revisiting some of the same territory from the Hysteria era that was likewise retreaded on 1999's Euphoria and arguably brought this band into a degree of relevance at the dawn of the new millennium, yet it also sees itself veering clear off the hard rock reservation for a sort of pop culture history excursion of random influences that reeks of trying to appeal to the ADHD-afflicted trustees of the Millennial generation. To coin a rather crude yet fitting analogy, a full through listening session of Def Leppard's 2015 self-titled album is a lot like a one hour listening session on an FM classic rock radio station.

On the one hand, this eventuality actually manages to start things off on a few highly positive notes, going back to the high points of this band's heyday and striking gold, with little accounting for accusations of self-plagiarism of course. The opening rocker "Let's Go" is basically a slightly more developed version of "Pour Some Sugar On Me", sporting an all but identical principle riff and differentiating itself from the original primarily by spicing up the lead guitar elements, a somewhat more elaborate yet sappier chorus section, and an oddball acoustic guitar interlude that actually features Rick Savage's bass work breaking out of the AC/DC box. Interestingly enough, there are a number of rather intricate little bass passages that weave in and out of these songs that are wildly out of character for one of rock/metal's least active bottom ends. This trend of rocking things up Hysteria style is continued on the follow up song "Dangerous", which takes a number of riffing cues from "Armageddon It", as well as upbeat rockers like "Invincible", "All Time High" and "Wings Of An Angel" that feature bits and pieces of some more obscure offerings from the late 80s opus.

However, and boy however, do things take a plunge into what the hell city when this power quintet decides to veer outside of their 80s retro box. As noted previously, Rick Savage has himself a good bit of fun relative to past Def Leppard outings and he showcases a fair bit of skill on the funky little novelty song "Man Enough", but the outright ripoff of Queen's "Another One Bites The Dust" is all over this sucker like white sheets on a grand wizard. Some of the other offenses are a bit more conventional for this outfit, such as boring ballads that don't really go anywhere, exist only to pick up on chicks that are 30 years too young for these aging rockers, and drag on too long like "We Belong" and "Last Dance" (though the latter does sound a little too much like Boston's "Amanda"). Then again, that verse riff on the unoriginally titled "Sea Of Love" (not that any of these songs titles haven't been used to death) sounds way too close to that final riff that follows the guitar solo of "Stairway To Heaven", not to mention one of the licks in the guitar solo sounding like it was lifted off "Sweet Home Alabama".

In this album's defense, it is a step up from much of what came after Adrenalize, but that isn't really much of a complement. It's a very confused collection of genre-hopping, radio-friendly rock and pop tunes that seems to be trying to be all things to all people, and as a collective whole isn't really much of anything other than slickly produced and competently performed. It is not a 100% directionless venture like the sad little LP that these blokes trotted out and tried to pass off as a rock album seven years prior, but it is the sort of single oriented nonsense that is impossible to listen through without constantly skipping around. When getting down to it, there isn't really anything on here that could be qualified as filler, as every song is crafted with the intent of being fit for radio play or individual purchase in mp3 format, but finding anyone that could enjoy this entire album would likely be like finding a griffin with a master's degree in chemistry. Def Leppard proves with this thing that they are fully capable of doing better, but have no intention of doing so.