Label: Bludgeon Riffola/Mercury Records
Release date: 5/27/2022
Production: Ronan McHugh
Album length: 61.27 min
Genre: Hard Rock
Rating: 9.0/10
Def Leppard are back with a new album. It’s the seventh record from the unchanged lineup that has been working in this format since “Slang” (1996), and we can call it their best to date. We keep circling around the number seven here. Seven years ago, its predecessor “Def Leppard” came knocking in this very direction, making it clear that Def Leppard had made a hard turn back to their golden years of the eighties and the first half of the nineties.
The album title, lifted from a line in the T.Rex song Get It On, says a lot about who the band have always drawn inspiration from. The record packs a few glam-rock-tinged ‘slaps in the face’ that couldn’t sound more Leppard if they tried, like the back-to-back Kick and Fire It Up, while the opener Take What You Want is a perfect imprint of classic Def Leppard rhetoric, only with 2022 production. Surprised? Not a chance. In fact, not a single Def Leppard album to date has tried to hide it. Glam rock is the mandatory soundtrack to the musical fabric of every Def Leppard record.
There are two schmaltzy ballads that ‘deceptively’ lean country, This Guitar and Lifeless, on which Elliott is joined in vocal duets by Robert Plant’s ‘colleague’ Alison Krauss. Otherwise, the album is superbly calibrated across more than an hour of running time when it comes to dynamics and mood swings. Elliott and Collen wrote most of it again, with a few contributions from Rick Savage. There are some interesting detours, such as Liquid Dust (no, it has nothing to do with sprinkling sugar), which is unmistakably Leppard in its melody but, with a slightly softer arrangement and added percussion, carries a whiff of The Beatles’ late ‘psychedelic’ period. Its ending barely perceptibly spills over into the great transition into the funky/groove moment of U Rock Me, with a striking contrast between an acoustic verse and an explosive arena rock chorus. The quintet’s remarkable maturity is confirmed by the excellent ballad Goodbye for Good This Time in the middle of the album, where string arrangements and an acoustic guitar interlude conjure up a special kind of magic alongside Elliott’s lived-in, sensual vocals. Had it been written in the eighties, it would be considered an evergreen Def Leppard hit today. A killer chorus crowns it. Open Your Eyes is another ‘slightly different’ but hugely successful detour, with a new, ‘ferociously’ catchy chorus and an exploratory verse that once again stirs up some of the psychedelic pop influences from the turn of the sixties into the seventies, the kind that would have made David Bowie himself prick up his senses, had he been around to hear it. The song Angels (Can’t Help You Now) also belongs firmly in this league of calmer moments. Here the band, through the sly use of string arrangements and the piano of Bowie’s legendary keyboardist Mike Garson, once again built a gripping atmosphere, without forgetting to cross it with their well-known pomp rock rhetoric. The textbook written by The Beatles remains very much relevant for Def Leppard in 2022. The album’s closer, From Here To Eternity, also works brilliantly and is endlessly interesting. It’s another one of the album’s ‘experimental adventures’, written entirely by bassist Rick Savage (its rhythmic ‘drive’ owes some thanks for inspiration to the second part (‘She’s So Heavy’) of the Beatles classic I Want You (She’s So Heavy)). The track stands apart from the rest of the material, but it’s captivating and takes nothing away from the charge of this exceptionally cunningly polished album, which, if anything, confirms that making it kept the band seriously busy. Busier than almost any of their last seven albums. Then there’s All We Need, which carries a faint, faint and ‘innocent’ undertone of the big ballad Hysteria. In short, the fun never runs out. The band had a blast in the studio, and as a result, every Def Leppard fan will definitely have a blast with the new album. Guaranteed. At every moment, the album is marked by that indispensable ‘party time pomp drive’.
Def Leppard polished “Diamond Star Halos” for a long time. There are lots of songs. But they’re all very, very finished. The details are honed. The band really did sweat every little thing in the arrangements and production. The album grips superbly. From start to finish. Despite its extreme length of over 61 minutes, only the unforgettable “Hysteria” (1987) tops it, and that one is just under a minute longer. That’s a good sign. So these days we wait several years for a Def Leppard album, but the wait more than pays off.
So, what gives the new album its true Leppard-style arena rock bite, beyond the seriously potent opening charge of the aforementioned trio of Take What You Want, Kick and Fire It Up, is reinforced further by SOS Emergency, All We Need, Open Your Eyes, Gimme A Kiss and Unbreakable. The latter has a brilliant contrast between a dark, dramatic verse and a sparkling, ‘bright’ chorus. This is the material we want from the band, material that gives the new record the shine of the classic days and reflects the quintet’s remarkable maturity in their seasoned years. Exactly what you have to do if you hold a position as important in the history of rock music as Def Leppard do. Cunning. Seductive and, in a way, after all these years of defiance, boyishly sinful.
The band spent two years on the album in the studio. It’s diverse, yet remarkably listenable throughout. A proper rock album from seasoned old foxes who this time gave the new material special attention. There’s a lot of it, and it takes time to absorb. “Diamond Star Halos” is the work of a band that, given its longevity, toughness, experience, routine and mileage, is a brilliant mix of tantalizing, direct rock potency and the artistry of filigree touches, steered more than splendidly by the extraordinary maturity of this iconic Sheffield quintet.
Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Track list:
1. Take What You Want
2. Kick
3. Fire It Up
4. This Guitar (featuring Alison Krauss)
5. SOS Emergency
6. Liquid Dust
7. U Rok Mi
8. Goodbye For Good
9. All We Need
10. Open Your Eyes
11. Gimme A Kiss
12. Angels
13. Lifeless (featuring Alison Krauss)
14. Unbreakable
15. From Here To Eternity
Lineup:
Joe Elliott – vocals, guitar on tracks 8, 12 and 14
Phil Collen – guitar on tracks 1 through 7 and 9 through 15, backing vocals on track 1
Rick Savage – bass guitar, guitar on tracks 1 through 3 and 15, backing vocals on track 15
Vivian Campbell – guitar, backing vocals on track 1
Rick Allen – drums
Additional musicians:
Ronan McHugh – drum programming
Debbi Blackwell-Cook – backing vocals on tracks 2, 3, 11 and 12
Dave Bassett – backing vocals on tracks 2 and 3
Alison Krauss – vocals on tracks 4 and 13
Eric Gorfain – string arrangements on tracks 4, 8 and 12
Mike Garson – piano on tracks 8 and 12
