Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Def Leppard
Label: Ear Music Records
Release: 2015
Runtime: 54:24
Rating: 4/5
Looks like the wait paid off after all. Even the doomsayers, and among Def Leppard fans in 2015 and 2016 there were certainly plenty, will be eating their words over this one. »Def Leppard« is an album that couldn’t carry a more fitting title. It’s a Def Leppard album that couldn’t define the band any better. From head to toe.
Just when you’d resigned yourself to fate and were fuming over the band’s experimenting, the guys finally make the right move after (far too) many years of waiting. They looked back across the whole discography. Deep into the eighties, toward the start of the career. Above all, the new album will delight everyone who puts their money on the era with Steve Clark in the lineup. That era ended with “Adrenalize”, and »Def Leppard« stirs up retro-sounding nostalgia without ever sliding into rehashing what’s already been made and said! Right from the get-go. That’s when the opening Let’s Go and, right behind it, Dangerous spin up. The first conjures Pour Some Sugar On Me, the second Photograph. Further on, the calmer We Belong stirs up quite a few echoes of one of the mightiest ballads of the rock era, Hysteria. Wedged in between is Man Enough. It’s no news that Def Leppard knew how to chase pop trends, and Man Enough carries a funky touch of Queen’s Another One Bites the Dust. Either way, it’s all packaged in pure Def Leppard style. So this isn’t about copying the commercially ignited hooks of the past, but about skillfully repackaging the retro-sounding pop rock culture of the eighties and carrying it into new times. The opening catchiness is kept up by Invincible too, placed in the middle of the record. In a word, »Leppard-style pop metal« or, to put it bluntly, »AOR« (sadly a dying genre these days – an imprint of the commercial success of the eighties).
Later on, Sea Of Love pours in more grit, more rock »nakedness«. As if they’d worked in a bit of that hard-sounding Southern outline and channeled it effectively into their own musicality. The album swings from mid-tempo, moody moments to more fired-up, bouncy rock ones. For instance, the calmer, melodically gorgeous Energized is quickly followed by the far noisier rock kicker All Time High. Battle of My Own is a real pleasure, an acoustic, organically stripped-down mid-tempo rock sermon, and the band keeps up an exceptionally musical vibe throughout, even though the opening pomp-pop catchiness gives way to a harder-sounding, organic backbone in the second half of the album. Once again the band has skillfully dressed up all that bombastic packaging with layered vocal harmonies, which makes the new album’s nostalgia pull even stronger.
Not to take anything away from the band’s superb feel for highly musical song formatting, since every track has instant grabbiness, it has to be said that the first half of the album puts the tracks that knock more directly on nostalgics’ hearts, the ones with which Def Leppard try to win immediate, high-level favor with the masses and fans, while the second half adds songs where the production’s jaggedness on the guitar lines comes through more, along with the album’s »organically stripped-down« sound. So a bit more sonic experimenting in the second half, which is typical of the band’s later period. Bottom line: no flubs. Just a track or two too many. Ten would have been plenty.
Six years after the release of its predecessor »Songs From the Sparkle Lounge«, not exactly the album fans demanded or expected, Def Leppard have more than convincingly shut up all the doubters who claimed they were out of ideas and had run out of steam with this fresh studio release. It’s an exceptionally strong effort that offers a truly authentic look at every chapter of the band’s discography. Def Leppard couldn’t stand more solidly behind an album title than they do this time. An elegant achievement from great gentlemen of rock’n’roll, with tracks that, in the way the arrangements are built and in their expressive power, will sit right alongside the iron-clad classics in the live set too. So? Def Leppard are nowhere near forgetting what the essence of true rock’n’roll craft is. They finally realized what they owed their fans, and they rewarded them generously for their loyalty and the agonizing wait.
Lineup
Joe Elliott – vocals, acoustic guitar
Phil Collen – guitar, backing vocals, vocals on track no. 4
Vivian Campbell – guitar, backing vocals, vocals on track no. 4
Rick Savage – bass guitar, backing vocals, guitar, vocals on track no. 4
Rick Allen – drums, backing vocals, vocals on track no. 4
Production
Ronan McHugh & Def Leppard
Track list
1. Let’s Go
2. Dangerous
3. Man Enough
4. We Belong
5. Invincible
6. Sea of Love
7. Energized
8. All Time High
9. Battle of My Own
10. Broke ‘N’ Brokenhearted
11. Forever Young
12. Last Dance
13. Wings of an Angel
14. Blind Faith
