Yeah!

Considering their recent output, especially the album X, this record is damn surprising and refreshing. It’s simply bursting with rock riffs. Projects like this usually turn watery, but this one is incredibly classy. Honestly, I’m not a big fan of albums like this myself, but this one caught me completely off guard, and I’ve been a card-carrying Def Leppard fan for more than twenty years. The boys have definitely Leppardized every track on the album and made them their own. In Don’t Believe A Word (originally by Thin Lizzy), Joe’s vocals at times even recall Phil Lynott himself. Speaking of vocals…Phil (Collen, the guitarist) sings one track too…Stay With Me (The Faces), and I have to admit his vocal is even “badder” than the original, where Rod Stewart does the warbling. Plenty of the songs sound nothing like the originals, and like I said, the Leppards make them their own, yet the primal spirit stays intact. And that’s the most important thing on the whole album: staying true to the original while still making the song yours. That’s exactly where Def Leppard have more than succeeded. This album might even be a new turning point commercially, since the commercial side of Def Leppard’s career has been sliding since the mid-nineties, and it could well happen that the band returns to the top spots they held in the golden eighties. Few artists have pulled off a comeback with a “cover” album. Let’s hope that on their next album of original material the boys follow the rock path they’ve laid out here, and that the “wandering” is over. P.S.: YEAH! is supposed to hit shelves in Slovenia in early June 2006.