Author Topic: Deadeye21’s Def Leppard Deep Dive  (Read 11256 times)

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Offline Zoom E

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Re: Deadeye21’s Def Leppard Deep Dive
« Reply #105 on: May 11, 2022, 06:01:41 PM »
   I know I made a cassette - it was/is a LONG record, it didn't even fit on a 60 minute cassette - and I put the b-sides on there as well

Speaking of B-sides..

I remember the 45's were supposed to be a puzzle of the album cover. I thought I had all of them, but wiki says Rocket was released in 1989. I was all set by then, and having live version of Women was not going to convince me. But here are the 6 I have. And the b-sides were easily better than anything on the album.



That’s cool. Shows how big the album was with so many singles released.

Offline Deadeye21

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Re: Deadeye21’s Def Leppard Deep Dive
« Reply #106 on: May 11, 2022, 06:23:47 PM »
Should I stop then? This seems like the point where many of you are done with the band already, even though I feel there are some great songs left to come in the later albums.
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Offline TAC

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Re: Deadeye21’s Def Leppard Deep Dive
« Reply #107 on: May 11, 2022, 06:27:26 PM »
Should I stop then?

No, of course not. Personally, I won't have very much to add, but I plan on listening as you go forward and commenting along the way.
would have thought the same thing but seeing the OP was TAC i immediately thought Maiden or DT related
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TAC got a higher score than me in the electronic round? Honestly, can I just drop out now? :lol

Offline The Realm

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Re: Deadeye21’s Def Leppard Deep Dive
« Reply #108 on: May 11, 2022, 06:34:10 PM »
Hysteria - I bought this on cassette on release day and I gotta admit I was blown away by it at the time. I think as much as anything it was where I was in my teenage years musical journey (ie I actually hadn't discovered even Metallica yet but was a massive Maiden and solo Ozzy fan, maybe a bit of W.A.S.P). So I listened to this album for about 6 months straight, just loved it. Anyway here is Australia, Def Leppard at that time wasn't a big band so the strange thing was that after my 6 months straight listening to this album and telling everyone how awesome it was, no one else I knew was actually into Def Leppard at all. So I think it was about 2 years (approx.) after the release of the album, Rocket was released as a single in Australia and it just took off. It was huge and the band all of a sudden became massive here. Meanwhile, I had well and truly moved on...and just hearing Rocket made me sick...haha...

I think we went through a similar journey as fellow Aussies.  I was first into Van Halen , Ozzy, KISS , WASP and - for me - Pyromania.   And yeah it was interesting how Def Leppard built gradual momentum with Hysteria here over a 2 year period.  Animal was a minor hit , then they really broke with a Top 15 hit with Love Bites and then as the album sales started to roll in they cracked Top 10 with Hysteria in 1989 and the single of the time Rocket fed off that.   For me it was Love Bites that was the catalyst , even though Rocket ended up charting a touch higher in the end.

I was getting into Pyromania at around the same time (just before) and that got far more play , even though I didn't dislike Hysteria.   I started to view them as a bit of a parody of themselves though after I heard Let's Get Rocked.

And yeah...............a band had to break BIG worldwide (not just USA) before they got radio play out here.  It was a totally different scene and just the diehard metalheads who could find a newsagent who stocked the magazines knew anything about anything.

Just like in the Van Halen thread...........talk of songs like Beautiful Girls being summer hits.  Never heard that once outside my own listening  :lol

Yes, totally agree. Exactly right on the Beautiful Girls comment - Summer Hit?? haha! I did forget to mention KISS and VH, yes I was also into them at the time.

Offline Deadeye21

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Re: Deadeye21’s Def Leppard Deep Dive
« Reply #109 on: May 11, 2022, 06:34:57 PM »
Alrighty, great!

In the Round, In Your Face coming later today (for me) and Adrenalize tomorrow.
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Offline The Realm

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Re: Deadeye21’s Def Leppard Deep Dive
« Reply #110 on: May 11, 2022, 06:35:53 PM »
Should I stop then? This seems like the point where many of you are done with the band already, even though I feel there are some great songs left to come in the later albums.

No way! Keep going Deadeye, I'll be still following along and will try to listen along as well.

Offline TAC

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Re: Deadeye21’s Def Leppard Deep Dive
« Reply #111 on: May 11, 2022, 08:14:19 PM »
In the Round, In Your Face coming later today (for me)

Watching/ listening to this for the first time in probably 30+ years. Enjoying it.
would have thought the same thing but seeing the OP was TAC i immediately thought Maiden or DT related
Winger Theater Forums........or WTF.  ;D
TAC got a higher score than me in the electronic round? Honestly, can I just drop out now? :lol

Offline Deadeye21

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Re: Deadeye21’s Def Leppard Deep Dive
« Reply #112 on: May 11, 2022, 09:48:31 PM »
In the Round, In Your Face - 1989

Setlist - 1. Stagefright. 2. Rock! Rock! (‘Til You Drop!). 3. Women. 4. Too Late For Love.5. Hysteria. 6. Gods of War. 7. Die Hard the Hunter.8. Bringin’ on the Heartbreak. 9. Fooli’n. 10. Armageddon It. 11. Animal. 12. Pour Some Sugar On Me. 13. Phil Solo. 14. Rock of Ages. 15. Photograph.

https://open.spotify.com/album/31oeDyCOLhgeZyktfxo0pE?si=13yFd4aiTt2ZRxHskrkGqQ
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLP_u_WyPWzX1o8jzxfOtoTtTTgIK4Oeqj

Hysteria was massive, we’ve covered this multiple times now. The tour supporting it was even bigger though. As the album kept breaking new milestones with the album, more and more dates were added. Starting from Tilburg on the 24th of June 1987 and finishing in Tacoma, Washington on October 27th 1988, the Hysteria tour spanned 235 shows across its run.

With two shows booked in the McNichols Sports Arena in Denver, Colorado, the opportunity arose to capture a document of the band’s most ambitious tour to date. Of course they took it up and on the 7th of March, 1989, their first live VHS was released.

In The Round, In Your Face is a fairly great performance and a really solid VHS presentation. This is far enough into the tour where the show is absolutely nailed but not too far so that touring fatigue has kicked in yet. The guitar tones in this are really strong. Nice and polished, but also fairly meaty. The drum tone isn’t as strong as on the LA Forum release, but this is Rick Allen’s first tour back on the drums since he lost the arm. Joe’s vocals are really full and strong here too.

How does the setlist stack up? Well, we have a huge taste of the hits. Much of the setlist is comprised of the singles from the last three albums, but we do have three deeper cuts as well. Gods of War and Die Hard the Hunter are absolutely my favourite tracks on this one, and Stagefright is a killer opening song. For Die Hard, Heartbreak and Foolin’, Steve Clark uses a double neck, and the added 12 string tone really elevates these song. Heartbreak starts off as an acoustic piece here, and it makes for one of my favourite versions of the song (though this arrangement was brought back on another live album, and I like it just a little better). Rock of Ages features a good extended singalong section, much like the LA Forum performance too. This show also uses a really cool intro tape, being the speech from Dirty Harry. “Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?” Sets a really cool vibe to open the night with.

The annoying thing to me is that there are a few songs that were cut off of this release. Don’t Shoot Shotgun, Let It Go and the B-Side Tear It Down, as well as another version of Travellin’ Band were all recorded at both shows, but not included. Thanks to a YouTuber named Rock Remastered, there are uncovered soundboards for all 4, and mixed into the playlist where they would have showed up in the setlist. It would’ve been great to have these, but I get the feeling that official releases for these cut songs wont be released anytime soon.  Check out the second link above to hear the extra songs.

So, for me, I think this is actually a really solid release and almost a perfect swan song of a release. Following the Hysteria tour, Leppard played the BRIT Awards and the MTV Video Music Awards in 1989, and then that was it for a little while.
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Offline bl5150

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Re: Deadeye21’s Def Leppard Deep Dive
« Reply #113 on: May 11, 2022, 10:00:18 PM »
One thing my collection lacks is live albums .............never formed a huge part of my listening apart from a few very big faves from Ozzy, Dokken etc...

I will try and take a listen.  Stagefright was my favourite Leppard song there for a while so yeah........very cool opener  :metal
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Offline Cool Chris

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Re: Deadeye21’s Def Leppard Deep Dive
« Reply #114 on: May 11, 2022, 10:13:00 PM »
I remember that detail with the images on the singles!

While just about every other album I enjoyed at that period of my life wouldn't hold my interest for 5 minutes, I can still find enjoyment in Hysteria, if only for the nostalgia (and I am not big on nostalgia).
"Nostalgia is just the ability to forget the things that sucked" - Nelson DeMille, 'Up Country'

Offline Deadeye21

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Re: Deadeye21’s Def Leppard Deep Dive
« Reply #115 on: May 12, 2022, 09:21:16 AM »
Gonna get this one out a little early as I’ve got some studio sessions tomorrow and don’t know if I’ll get this up otherwise.

Adrenalize - 1992.

Tracklisting - 1. Let’s Get Rocked. 2. Heaven Is. 3. Make Love Like A Man. 4. Tonight. 5. White Lightning. 6. Stand Up (Kick Love Into Motion). 7. Personal Property.8. Have You Ever Needed Someone So Bad. 9. I Wanna Touch U. 10. Tear It Down.

https://open.spotify.com/album/7FKcbsCm4eoDWTMTNCUUqw?si=UodG29XIRIye3s3OFfJpOw

Following the tour for Hysteria, the band took some time off before reconvening to start the writing sessions. But something was very different. Steve Clark was having serious problems with his alcoholism, and ultimately was given six months off from the band to sort himself out.

Unfortunately though, instead of dealing with his problems and trying to live a normal life, Steve spent most of his time in his local pub. On the 8th of January, 1991,  Steve Clark was found dead with a high blood alcohol level and traces of morphine found in his system. Once again, this could have been the end of Def Leppard.

For the first time since 1981, Def Leppard continued under their own steam without Mutt Lange, deciding instead to self-produce with their longtime engineer Matt Shipley. Instead of hiring someone else for the position of guitarist straight away, Def Leppard performed this album as a four-piece. Much like Hysteria, this album spawned six singles, four of which were largely successful.

How does it hold up though? Let’s find out together.

The first track here is Let’s Get Rocked. This intro is a lot more instant than Rock! Rock! and Women before it. Once again, the bass guitar is super prominent as the main instrument throughout the verses, and there’s some decent lead fills from Phil Collen bouncing around. The problem is this is really nothing substantial. These lyrics devolve into an almost self-parody and repeating a lot of the “rock this, rock that” pastiche that became super overdone in the 80s. This song is really fun to see in concert with a very singalong chorus and the solo is fairly decent, but I can see how this is not everyone’s cup of tea.

Heaven Is follows up. I tend to like this one a lot more. There’s still nothing super substantial on the level of the albums preceding it, but this chorus gets stuck in my head often. The open vibe that precedes the solo is fairly standout too. This one seems to have never been played live, which is a shame because I feel like it would go down really well live. I actually think this is a better song than Let’s Get Rocked, and could’ve been a great feel good opener for the album.

Make Love Like A Man is a point where I feel like they tried to take the innuendo laden Pour Some Sugar on Me and tried to one up it. It doesn’t work for me, and comes off a little second rate. It’s got a good energy to it though. This is one that I’ve managed to see live for myself and it does work quite well, but it’s at this point that I’m already realising that this album may not be the great follow-up to Hysteria that I was hoping for. Admittedly, I rarely turn to Adrenalize and I’m starting to feel like there might be a good reason for it. The ending of this song makes you realise how much Steve contributed to the group vocal, as the backing vocals here just sound like Joe multitracking. And if you’ve been following these write ups since the start, you know that’s something I tend to love in these songs.

We follow up with Tonight, which starts with a huge wall of vocals. This one is more of a ballad, and the way the riff is phrased actually kinda reminds me of Bringin’ on the Heartbreak. The build into the chorus is masterful, and the structure of this song is really well crafted. This one is fairly short, which is a shame because it’s actually a really well written song. Phil’s solo here is awesome and the vocals all over this are really good. This is the first song so far where I’ve felt like I wish it was longer, but it makes it’s point well and moves on. I liked this better than Love Bites this go around, so let that say what it will.

White Lightning is our epic for Adrenalize. The guitar intro is reminiscent of the opening ambience to Gods of War and as it moves into the main crux of the song, I feel like we’re in for something special. This song is a tribute to Steve Clark and the lyrics deal with the demons of addiction. The structure here is similar to that of Gods and that chorus is huge. The guitar work in this song is genuinely next level and almost feels out of place for Adrenalize with all that’s come before it. I feel like this one is nothing shy of cathartic, and with Die Hard the Hunter having found it’s way back to the setlist for the 2019 Vegas residency, I really want this song to see the light of the stage sometime soon.

Stand Up (Kick Love Into Motion) starts with a vibe that immediately takes me back to Animal. Sav’s staccato bass hits and that jangly guitar tone take me back to older songs and put me in the right mood for this song immediately. The chorus vocal here feels very at home. I’ve heard rumours that this song was written in 1985 and almost made the cut for Hysteria, but they thought it was too similar to other songs, and I can really hear it. Nonetheless, I think this is actually a really good song, and again, why have they not played this live? Phil’s solo includes a little bit of tapping which is really different for him, and the vocal delivery is strong.

The intro to Personal Property is great, which almost makes it a shame that the rest of the song is very undeserving of that start up. These lyrics feel more at home with Steel Panther than Def Leppard. There’s a decent pace to the guitars here, but the vocal pattern for the chorus feels uncomfortable. There’s actually a lot going on here, but I don’t know that that makes it good. The bridge gets back to that epic feeling from the intro, which kinda hammers home to me that the song didn’t deserve it. Some of the solo goes into a very Brian May direction which is refreshing. I think I’d like this song if the vocal and the lyric wasn’t what it was. I almost feel like there’s a good song being held way back.

Have You Ever Needed Someone So Bad is another ballad, which works really well. However, and this is going to come out strangely so bear with me, I feel like this song has suffered for me because of what they do with it live.  While there is nothing I’d want to change about the song as it exists here, which I think is an absolutely awesome ballad, I feel that it’s inclusion as part of the 2012 acoustic medley, and the full acoustic performance on Hits Vegas, the electric version just doesn’t quite cut it for me. The lyrics are tender and fragile, naturally about needing someone that you can’t be with, and really suit the acoustic approach more. There are some weird effects under Phil’s lead in the middle which are a little distracting, but all up this is a great song.

I Wanna Touch U is the second to last song here and this is… interesting. I do not know how to feel about this song. This has a cool chorus, but everything here just feels like Hysteria leftovers in the worst way. Solo’s cool and this one is nice and short, but honestly I don’t know what to make of this. I know there’s gotta be someone who likes this a lot, and the key change into the last chorus is nice, but I really really don’t get it. This song was released as the last single from Adrenalize and I’m still kinda questioning why.

The final track on this album is surprisingly not new, nor is it old. As mentioned while discussing the B-Sides to Hysteria, I mentioned that all of them had been at least partially redone for Retro Active or Adrenalize. To close off this album, we have Tear It Down. Immediately noticeable is that there is a new lead guitar over the intro, which adds a layer of excitement to it. The bass here is a lot more prominent, but I think the Hysteria vocal served this a lot better. That said, a lot of this track feels bigger and better than the B-Side apart from that. The chorus group vocal feels like it could actually be from the original version. I think I might like the original solo for this song a bit better though. This is actually a really hard comparison to make, but it does make a great closer to Adrenalize.

Ultimately, if I had been alive and a Def Leppard fan in 1992, I don’t know how I’d have felt for this release. The landscape of rock had become very different with Nirvana and Metallica breaking big at the time and this feels like it’s maybe trying a bit too hard to be a follow up to Hysteria while maybe not fully understanding what made that album great. What’s disappointing to me is that in the years that have passed since the release of Adrenalize, so many of the great songs have fully fallen off of the setlist. This is a problem that lasts for almost every album following this too, which is a bummer because I think we’ve got a lot of great work yet to come. I’m kinda thinking this deserves a 3.5 ultimately. The songs that work really work, but the ones that don’t kinda kill my mood a little. I think this is an album where you need to look past the two biggest tracks to find the real gold.

With my own music taking a lot of precedence in the next few days, I aim to get Retro Active out on Saturday, and then hopefully be on track for Slang on Monday and once every two days following that. Sorry if I start falling behind, but I’ve finally got some things I need to take care of. 
« Last Edit: May 12, 2022, 09:57:04 AM by Deadeye21 »
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Offline Stadler

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Re: Deadeye21’s Def Leppard Deep Dive
« Reply #116 on: May 12, 2022, 09:46:06 AM »
So I'm going to introduce something new here.  I don't know if everyone is like me, but the albums that I REALLY cut my teeth on, the albums that formed my musical "being", are all ALBUMS I love.   Sure, some songs are better than others, but I don't skip one song on those formative albums - Hotter Than Hell, High Voltage, Blizzard of Ozz, Number of the Beast...   

As I got more and more broad in my listening, as bands moved more or less farther away from the core of what I initially liked, there were more and more albums - Crazy World, Ram It Down, No Prayer For The Dying, Asylum - that I realized I wasn't going to force myself to listen to or like. Some bands, Scorpions, I basically abandoned.   Def Leppard is one of those. I recognize there are some good songs on there; it's not like they completely forgot how to write songs.  It's just not what I wanted to hear then; at that time - 1992 - I was heavier into prog, and even jam bands.  I think I saw Tull, ELP and the Allman's like 10 times between them from 1991 to 1994. 

Even then I was starting to realize there is too much music to absorb everything, and if I didn't like something, well, I didn't like it.

Offline TAC

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Re: Deadeye21’s Def Leppard Deep Dive
« Reply #117 on: May 12, 2022, 02:02:19 PM »
I don't know if everyone is like me,

Take it to the bank, brother! :lol



So I'm going to introduce something new here.  I don't know if everyone is like me, but the albums that I REALLY cut my teeth on, the albums that formed my musical "being", are all ALBUMS I love.   Sure, some songs are better than others, but I don't skip one song on those formative albums - Hotter Than Hell, High Voltage, Blizzard of Ozz, Number of the Beast...   

As I got more and more broad in my listening, as bands moved more or less farther away from the core of what I initially liked, there were more and more albums - Crazy World, Ram It Down, No Prayer For The Dying, Asylum - that I realized I wasn't going to force myself to listen to or like. Some bands, Scorpions, I basically abandoned.   Def Leppard is one of those. I recognize there are some good songs on there; it's not like they completely forgot how to write songs.  It's just not what I wanted to hear then; at that time - 1992 - I was heavier into prog, and even jam bands.  I think I saw Tull, ELP and the Allman's like 10 times between them from 1991 to 1994. 

Even then I was starting to realize there is too much music to absorb everything, and if I didn't like something, well, I didn't like it.


So while there's albums that I love and grew up with and love every song, when I was in college 86-90, I was going through tons of music. I started making Compilation Tapes. I had three 90 min UFO mix tapes, four Alice ones, two Kiss ones, you get the picture. As much as I'd like to say I'm an album guy, I think I could go both ways on that. Er..
would have thought the same thing but seeing the OP was TAC i immediately thought Maiden or DT related
Winger Theater Forums........or WTF.  ;D
TAC got a higher score than me in the electronic round? Honestly, can I just drop out now? :lol

Offline Stadler

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Re: Deadeye21’s Def Leppard Deep Dive
« Reply #118 on: May 12, 2022, 02:15:40 PM »
No, me too.  Every car I owned I wired in a cheap Panasonic tape deck, and I'd do the same thing.  New albums got an entire tape side, and some bands - Kiss, Aerosmith - would get compilations.  But when I was home I would listen to albums through headphones on my Dad's kick ass stereo, and then, it'd be side one and side two. 

Offline TAC

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Re: Deadeye21’s Def Leppard Deep Dive
« Reply #119 on: May 12, 2022, 02:49:11 PM »
In the Round, In Your Face - 1989

Setlist - 1. Stagefright. 2. Rock! Rock! (‘Til You Drop!). 3. Women. 4. Too Late For Love.5. Hysteria. 6. Gods of War. 7. Die Hard the Hunter.8. Bringin’ on the Heartbreak. 9. Fooli’n. 10. Armageddon It. 11. Animal. 12. Pour Some Sugar On Me. 13. Phil Solo. 14. Rock of Ages. 15. Photograph.


So I listened and watched this for the first time in well over 30 years. I actually enjoyed it. It's actually not as polished as I remember it being. I don't remember loving the camera work, and I wasn't a fan of the in the round stage.

But the video isn't really that bad, actually. My chief complaint was the endless shots of the girls in the front row.

Soundtrack wise, this is really strong. I found it online last night and I will happily not wait 30 more years before I listen again.

And again...Rick Allen  :hefdaddy
would have thought the same thing but seeing the OP was TAC i immediately thought Maiden or DT related
Winger Theater Forums........or WTF.  ;D
TAC got a higher score than me in the electronic round? Honestly, can I just drop out now? :lol

Offline TAC

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Re: Deadeye21’s Def Leppard Deep Dive
« Reply #120 on: May 12, 2022, 02:58:55 PM »
Adrenalize - 1992.

Tracklisting - 1. Let’s Get Rocked. 2. Heaven Is. 3. Make Love Like A Man. 4. Tonight. 5. White Lightning. 6. Stand Up (Kick Love Into Motion). 7. Personal Property.8. Have You Ever Needed Someone So Bad. 9. I Wanna Touch U. 10. Tear It Down.


I listened to this at work today. I was certainly willing to give this album a shot. I remember hearing Vivian joined the band and I was pumped. I seem to remember MTV showing a live show or part of a live show around this time where they played Let's Get Rocked at least.


Anyway, I think Let's Get Rocked is probably the best song here, and I'm not saying it's a great song. I mean, it is pretty good, but it was just not what I was looking for. Instead of them moving on from the Hysteria style, they seemed to double down on it. I don't remember ever owning this. My gf might have.






Even then I was starting to realize there is too much music to absorb everything, and if I didn't like something, well, I didn't like it.

I wanted to come back to this...

While my long ago imagined lifelong fandom of Def Leppard never materialized, I don't think that I ever stopped "liking" them. I mean, I faithfully checked out whatever new song that had with each new album. I was hoping, praying that I would like it. Def Leppard was a 13 y/o TAC's first favorite NEW band, and that will never go away.
would have thought the same thing but seeing the OP was TAC i immediately thought Maiden or DT related
Winger Theater Forums........or WTF.  ;D
TAC got a higher score than me in the electronic round? Honestly, can I just drop out now? :lol

Offline Stadler

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Re: Deadeye21’s Def Leppard Deep Dive
« Reply #121 on: May 13, 2022, 09:43:39 AM »
Even then I was starting to realize there is too much music to absorb everything, and if I didn't like something, well, I didn't like it.

I wanted to come back to this...

While my long ago imagined lifelong fandom of Def Leppard never materialized, I don't think that I ever stopped "liking" them. I mean, I faithfully checked out whatever new song that had with each new album. I was hoping, praying that I would like it. Def Leppard was a 13 y/o TAC's first favorite NEW band, and that will never go away.

Well, I DO listen; I have heard most of the catalogue.  I just don't really force myself to listen to much of it.

Offline The Realm

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Re: Deadeye21’s Def Leppard Deep Dive
« Reply #122 on: May 13, 2022, 05:12:15 PM »
Adrenalize - I remember when this was released in 1992, Pantera were probably my favourite band at that time, so yeah Adrenalize wasn't for me. I thought Let's Get Rocked was pretty good though. One of my good mates got the CD but I am pretty sure I never bought it and I am pretty sure I actually have never heard the whole album before - until now. I gave the album a listen, I did struggle to get through it, it just feels very formulaic overall, like trying to catch the magic of Hysteria but the songs/melodies just not being there.

Offline bl5150

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Re: Deadeye21’s Def Leppard Deep Dive
« Reply #123 on: May 14, 2022, 02:55:34 AM »
I found Let's Get Rocked cringey but , from memory , I used to play Tonight/White Lightning/Tear It Down -  but then I preferred the demo versions of Tonight and Tear It Down.  So Adrenalize got very little play as an album listen.
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Offline HOF

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Re: Deadeye21’s Def Leppard Deep Dive
« Reply #124 on: May 14, 2022, 08:56:47 AM »
Let’s Get Rocked was my introduction to Def Leppard when it came out on the radio. It’s a pretty catchy song, and I still love the bridge part (“all I wanna do is take a ride into the blue.”). It is pretty hokey. Still have a good bit of nostalgia for it though.

I can’t say I listen to this album very often these days, but I do think Heaven Is is a fun song. Stand Up (Kick Love Into Motion) is another that I still like. And I have always loved Have You Ever Needed Someone So Bad. Call it a guilty pleasure, I just love the wash of guitars and vocals on it. Tonight and I Wanna Touch U are also catchy enough, but some iffy lyrics for sure. Then there’s a couple songs that are straight up awful in Make Love Like a Man and Personal Property (yikes!).

This is only sort of a hard rock album. It’s more of a pop thing for sure. But White Lightning is a pretty cool song, something a bit more musically deep. At 7:00 minutes it could pass for prog, and I have to say a whole album of songs in this vein would probably be really cool. Tear it Down is also a pretty fun rocker and a nice closer.

This album in particular I feel like you can really pick up on the Mutt Lange format. A lot of these tracks you can envision Shania Twain singing them with a twang and some fiddles filling out the sound. That said, I think they managed to produce another great sounding album in the vein of Hysteria, even if that style was kind of on the way out. I remember discovering Pearl Jam and Nirvana later on that same year. It’s not a bad follow up effort to a classic album, but it probably needed to come out two or three years earlier than it did.

Offline Deadeye21

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Re: Deadeye21’s Def Leppard Deep Dive
« Reply #125 on: May 14, 2022, 10:50:41 AM »
Retro Active - 1993
Vault - 1995

Tracklisting - 1. Desert Song. 2. Fractured Love. 3. Action. 4. Two Steps Behind5. She’s Too Tough. 6. Miss You In A Heartbeat. 7. Only After Dark. 8. Ride Into The Sun. 9. From the Inside. 10. Ring of Fire. 11. I Wanna Be Your Hero12. Miss You In A Heartbeat (Electric Version). 13. Two Steps Behind (Electric Version) 14. Miss You In A Jeartbeat (Acoustic Version).
1. When Love and Hate Collide.

https://open.spotify.com/album/51JMDhly9GKYXgFrOekyIR?si=d2ZeeQNORJmsMcTm1vg8-w and https://open.spotify.com/album/2eb76s2S0cEzqqyEeGJ8Xk?si=HBFT6hw5TpufyNg5qnufnA

12 years in  and there have been only five full length albums in the Def Leppard discography. In a time where the band’s sound was evidently changing and evolving, it was clear that an era was now over in Leppard history that deserved cataloguing one more time. To close the door on the Steve Clark era, Def Leppard released Retro Active, a collection of B-Sides and unfinished tracks.

To quote the sticker from the front of my Dad’s CD copy from 1993. “This is not a new Def Leppard album, nor is it an old Def Leppard record. It is Retro Active - a collection of songs which have appeared in various hard to find places or in certain cases never made it out of the studio until now.” I’ll be referring to the liner notes for the album and telling you their original release history as we go along here. The first thing to note here is that this is the very first release featuring performances from Vivian Campbell and sadly the last to feature any from Steve Clark.

Desert Song kicks us off and this is my favourite Def Leppard song. Did you expect me to say that? I bet you didn’t. This thing just has a crushingly heavy riff for Def Leppard and it’s HUGE! According to the liner notes, the  instrumental idea was written and completed during the Hysteria sessions but left unrecorded due to remaining lyricless. In 1993, Joe penned the lyrics on a “day off” in Portugal during the Adrenalize tour, and the track was recorded shortly after that. My question follows along the lines of that used on many Adrenalize songs. Why was this not used in a proper album and why the hell have they not played this live? The second solo is from Steve Clark and is probably my favourite of his work, the clean bridge is the perfect relief (in which Sav’s bass fills are impeccable) and the difference between Joe’s lower verse vocals and the higher choruses really sells me on the intensity. This song harkens back to Def Leppard’s metal roots and absolutely smokes it. This song is immense, and if you aren’t headbanging while this song is on, you’ve got it very wrong indeed.

As Desert Song fades out, we get the sound of almost tribal percussion fading us into the nest song. Here we have Fractured Love, another leftover from the early Hysteria sessions.  Before Mutt Lange threw the idea of making “Pyromania 2” out the window in favour of making the Hysteria album, this was one of the strongest tracks they wrote. However, the intro was incomplete and the song was shelved. You can really hear the new work from 1993 compared to the original work from 1984, as once we kick into the full song the vocals change kinda drastically. This song is a banger, and I’m left wondering what the follow up to Pyromania could have been without Lange’s push to make Hysteria what it became.

“We wanted to do a few cover tunes for the Adrenalize B-Sides, we chose this one because we are all big Sweet fans. ‘Nuff said”.
Track three is the B-Side from the Make Love Like A Man single, Action. This song sees it’s way in and out of the setlist fairly regularly, having seen it’s way as a bonus track on Mirror Ball and one of the two encore openers on the 2019 Vegas residency setlists. This cover is one of those that improve upon the originals and the Leppard version just oozes charisma. The group vocal is on point, the guitars are huge and there’s just a lot of great stuff here. This is the first performance credited to Vivian Campbell, here credited only for backing vocals.

Track four is easily the most successful song on Retro Active, Two Steps Behind. “Inspired by Joe’s original demo” (we will get to that in roughly nine more songs) “and done for fun acoustically, this song eventually surfaced as an extra track for a CD single release. Strings were added a year later when it was chosen for the “Last Action Hero” movie soundtrack.” This song is still played frequently in Def Leppard concerts and it was a huge hit. This song was released as a band only version on the Make Love Like A Man single before strings were added by Michael Kamen (composer behind a lot of great film scores including Licence to Kill and Die Hard, as well as being the orchestral composer for The Wall and Metallica’s original S&M). This is Vivian’s first appearance on guitar for the band too. Not much needs to be said about this one, it’s a huge track and we all know it.
Personal story I can add is that this was actually played at my Mum and Dad’s wedding!

Track five is She’s Too Tough, a song written back in the Hysteria sessions by Joe but for a Canadian band named Helix. In 1992, Phil laid down new guitars and then the two Ricks came in and did their parts while Joe had a day off. This song uses Joe’s original demo vocals from somewhere between 84 and 87 and this actually sounds really uncomfortable for Joe. This is a whole tone higher than Stagefright, so it’s barely in Joe’s range. Nonetheless, I like this song. Nice and shirt and would’ve made for a great B-Side to Heaven Is, Tonight AND Stand Up (Kick Love Into Motion).

Track six, Miss You Like A Heartbeat,  is a similar story. This song was written Phil for a band called The Law in 1992. This version came about when Phil heard Joe messing around with the song on a piano, and was originally intended to just be a demo recording for just guitar, piano and vocal, but the song just kept growing as it often does in Leppard land. A demo version of this, the way that Phil originally wrote it was also on the Make Love single. This is actually a really moving ballad, and is another song that could’ve fit really nicely onto Adrenalize. As it is, this song was released as a single and it did pretty well for itself. Phil plays an almost Spanish inspired guitar solo here on the acoustic, and the whole sing just has a really good mood to it.

Track seven is easily my least favourite song on Retro Active, Only After Dark. This is a cover of a Mick Ronson song that was “updated and given the profile we felt it always deserved”. This song is a decent jam, but it just doesn’t do very much for me ultimately. This was released as a B-Side for the Let’s Get Rocked single, so I guess that whole single was a little disappointing ultimately. This is a cool enough song, but even at just under 4 minutes I feel like it goes on too long for the limited ideas presented. Rest In Peace Mick Ronson.

Track eight is the ultimate version of Ride Into the Sun. This is a slight update from the Hysteria B-Side. This has an added Honky Tonk piano intro by Ian Hunter of Mott the Hoople and David Bowie fame. Other than that, we have a better snare sound added in June of 93. I don’t really have much I can say about this song, because the write up from the Hysteria B-Sides thread was pretty much all that needs to be said.

Track nine is an oddity known only as From The Inside. According to the liner notes, this song was originally written by Joe when he was asked to perform with the Hothouse Flowers for a late night TV Show. The two bands loved the song, and it appeared as a B-Side to Have You Ever Needed Someone So Bad. This is a really intriguing song, written about addiction from the point of view of the drugs. It’s an odd one to be sure, but a really welcome one. I don’t think Leppard has another song that sounds like this, for better or for worse, but the song itself is actually really good. This showed up a fair few times on the Adrenalize tour and then showed up for some acoustic performances in 95, 96 and 2004. Statistically speaking, this is the most played song on Retro Active apart from Two Steps Behind.

Track ten and eleven both also emerge from the Hysteria sessions, Ring of Fire and I Wanna Be Your Hero. Ring of Fire has a way better intro for the Retro Active version, and I feel like the clean guitar swells within the second verse are a lot more crisp. This is a really great song, which saw a few live performances as a concert opener on the X tour. The liner notes say that this song was “inspired by… ahh, you don’t want to know”. If I don’t want to know writes songs this good, then keep doing whatever it is we don’t get to know about!
I Wanna Be Your Hero was originally written under the name Love Bites, but the title was stolen and used for a much different song (which for me is kinda inferior). This version has a bit of a different intro, which brings the little lead guitar fills in a little earlier. This song is still a banger and should’ve been on Hysteria for my money. The drums for both of these songs have been re-recorded and both songs were enhanced with more guitars (like that banging intro riff for Ring of Fire!) and chorus vocals in 1993. The issue I had with Hero on the B-Side version is removed and we get a proper fade out this time. Love it!

Track twelve is the original electric version of Miss You In A Heartbeat. The opening guitar swells are a thing of total beauty and this version of the song is actually the one I think I would tend to gravitate towards for an actual album, as it just has a great vibe. Joe’s delivery on this is actually even a bit cleaner to me than that of the main version. The solo here is your run of the mill Phil, but that’s kinda what this version called for. I just really like this.

The closing track is a full band take on Joe’s original demo of Two Steps Behind, and I actually love the fact that this is the closing track for no other reason than we actually get a Vivian Campbell guitar solo! This version of Two Steps Behind actually fundamentally changes the song, removing the main chord progression outside of the chorus. Rick’s drumming feels a little too drum machine like, but he chucks in a few cool fills here and there. Joe’s vocals on this version are nowhere near as good as they are on the main version of the song, but you get that. The whole song builds to that guitar solo, and even if it’s a little short, it’s a great intro to Vivian in the band and kinda reassures us that the band is in safe hands with him. One could almost view this whole album as a concept about Def Leppard learning to become a band again without Steve and looking into the future by letting go of these old songs once and for all. In doing so, I think it’s an amazing release.

Now, see, after the closing track, there’s a hidden bonus track of just Joe’s piano and vocal for Miss You In A Heartbeat. It’s kinda same old same old after you’ve heard the main version. However, I’m instead going to touch on another song that was released only on the greatest hits collection in 1995, since it doesn’t really have another chance to come into play. That song is called When Love and Hate Collide, from Vault. Why include it here? Well, it was said in an interview with Joe in 1995 that putting this song and the compilation as a whole out was to completely close the door on the Steve Clark before they put out Slang. When Love and Hate Collide is a very pretty sounding ballad which still makes its way out from time to time, mostly recently being played as part of the encore to the Hysteria 2018 tour. It’s your standard power ballad affair for Leppard, and this is actually one of their biggest songs in the UK. This one never did anything much for me, but I can see why it still gets attention.

So, Retro Active. It actually feels unfair to rate this album as it is a collection of leftovers, much as I couldn’t rate leftover spaghetti bolognaise as a new meal. We have, in fact, already discussed three of these tracks during this deep dive already. But in looking at it now, and not being a live album, I kinda have to give it a rating. One would think that being a bunch of leftover songs would tend to mean that it shouldn’t deserve to be ranked higher than any proper album, but I think it genuinely is. I also realised that I didn’t give Adrenalize a rating, so I’m giving that a 3.75. Retro Active, I think I’m gonna give it a 4.5. This really holds up, flows well as an album and serves as a critical milestone in the band’s career.

And with the changing of the guard taken care of, we get to start the Vivian Campbell era. Join me on Monday for a discussion of the oft-maligned Slang!
Let's go with a P for Deadeye has premature alphabetejaculation.

Offline TAC

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Re: Deadeye21’s Def Leppard Deep Dive
« Reply #126 on: May 14, 2022, 11:35:35 AM »

Track nine is an oddity known only as From The Inside. According to the liner notes, this song was originally written by Joe when he was asked to perform with the Hothouse Flowers for a late night TV Show.

Are the "Accoustic Hippies From Hell" actually the Hothouse Flowers? Who is credited instrumentally?

BTW, the Hothouse Flowers are fucking awesome!
would have thought the same thing but seeing the OP was TAC i immediately thought Maiden or DT related
Winger Theater Forums........or WTF.  ;D
TAC got a higher score than me in the electronic round? Honestly, can I just drop out now? :lol

Offline WilliamMunny

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Re: Deadeye21’s Def Leppard Deep Dive
« Reply #127 on: May 14, 2022, 11:58:05 AM »
Retro Active - 1993
Vault - 1995

Tracklisting - 1. Desert Song. 2. Fractured Love. 3. Action. 4. Two Steps Behind5. She’s Too Tough. 6. Miss You In A Heartbeat. 7. Only After Dark. 8. Ride Into The Sun. 9. From the Inside. 10. Ring of Fire. 11. I Wanna Be Your Hero12. Miss You In A Heartbeat (Electric Version). 13. Two Steps Behind (Electric Version) 14. Miss You In A Jeartbeat (Acoustic Version).
1. When Love and Hate Collide.

https://open.spotify.com/album/51JMDhly9GKYXgFrOekyIR?si=d2ZeeQNORJmsMcTm1vg8-w and https://open.spotify.com/album/2eb76s2S0cEzqqyEeGJ8Xk?si=HBFT6hw5TpufyNg5qnufnA

12 years in  and there have been only five full length albums in the Def Leppard discography. In a time where the band’s sound was evidently changing and evolving, it was clear that an era was now over in Leppard history that deserved cataloguing one more time. To close the door on the Steve Clark era, Def Leppard released Retro Active, a collection of B-Sides and unfinished tracks.

To quote the sticker from the front of my Dad’s CD copy from 1993. “This is not a new Def Leppard album, nor is it an old Def Leppard record. It is Retro Active - a collection of songs which have appeared in various hard to find places or in certain cases never made it out of the studio until now.” I’ll be referring to the liner notes for the album and telling you their original release history as we go along here. The first thing to note here is that this is the very first release featuring performances from Vivian Campbell and sadly the last to feature any from Steve Clark.

Desert Song kicks us off and this is my favourite Def Leppard song. Did you expect me to say that? I bet you didn’t. This thing just has a crushingly heavy riff for Def Leppard and it’s HUGE! According to the liner notes, the  instrumental idea was written and completed during the Hysteria sessions but left unrecorded due to remaining lyricless. In 1993, Joe penned the lyrics on a “day off” in Portugal during the Adrenalize tour, and the track was recorded shortly after that. My question follows along the lines of that used on many Adrenalize songs. Why was this not used in a proper album and why the hell have they not played this live? The second solo is from Steve Clark and is probably my favourite of his work, the clean bridge is the perfect relief (in which Sav’s bass fills are impeccable) and the difference between Joe’s lower verse vocals and the higher choruses really sells me on the intensity. This song harkens back to Def Leppard’s metal roots and absolutely smokes it. This song is immense, and if you aren’t headbanging while this song is on, you’ve got it very wrong indeed.

As Desert Song fades out, we get the sound of almost tribal percussion fading us into the nest song. Here we have Fractured Love, another leftover from the early Hysteria sessions.  Before Mutt Lange threw the idea of making “Pyromania 2” out the window in favour of making the Hysteria album, this was one of the strongest tracks they wrote. However, the intro was incomplete and the song was shelved. You can really hear the new work from 1993 compared to the original work from 1984, as once we kick into the full song the vocals change kinda drastically. This song is a banger, and I’m left wondering what the follow up to Pyromania could have been without Lange’s push to make Hysteria what it became.

“We wanted to do a few cover tunes for the Adrenalize B-Sides, we chose this one because we are all big Sweet fans. ‘Nuff said”.
Track three is the B-Side from the Make Love Like A Man single, Action. This song sees it’s way in and out of the setlist fairly regularly, having seen it’s way as a bonus track on Mirror Ball and one of the two encore openers on the 2019 Vegas residency setlists. This cover is one of those that improve upon the originals and the Leppard version just oozes charisma. The group vocal is on point, the guitars are huge and there’s just a lot of great stuff here. This is the first performance credited to Vivian Campbell, here credited only for backing vocals.

Track four is easily the most successful song on Retro Active, Two Steps Behind. “Inspired by Joe’s original demo” (we will get to that in roughly nine more songs) “and done for fun acoustically, this song eventually surfaced as an extra track for a CD single release. Strings were added a year later when it was chosen for the “Last Action Hero” movie soundtrack.” This song is still played frequently in Def Leppard concerts and it was a huge hit. This song was released as a band only version on the Make Love Like A Man single before strings were added by Michael Kamen (composer behind a lot of great film scores including Licence to Kill and Die Hard, as well as being the orchestral composer for The Wall and Metallica’s original S&M). This is Vivian’s first appearance on guitar for the band too. Not much needs to be said about this one, it’s a huge track and we all know it.
Personal story I can add is that this was actually played at my Mum and Dad’s wedding!

Track five is She’s Too Tough, a song written back in the Hysteria sessions by Joe but for a Canadian band named Helix. In 1992, Phil laid down new guitars and then the two Ricks came in and did their parts while Joe had a day off. This song uses Joe’s original demo vocals from somewhere between 84 and 87 and this actually sounds really uncomfortable for Joe. This is a whole tone higher than Stagefright, so it’s barely in Joe’s range. Nonetheless, I like this song. Nice and shirt and would’ve made for a great B-Side to Heaven Is, Tonight AND Stand Up (Kick Love Into Motion).

Track six, Miss You Like A Heartbeat,  is a similar story. This song was written Phil for a band called The Law in 1992. This version came about when Phil heard Joe messing around with the song on a piano, and was originally intended to just be a demo recording for just guitar, piano and vocal, but the song just kept growing as it often does in Leppard land. A demo version of this, the way that Phil originally wrote it was also on the Make Love single. This is actually a really moving ballad, and is another song that could’ve fit really nicely onto Adrenalize. As it is, this song was released as a single and it did pretty well for itself. Phil plays an almost Spanish inspired guitar solo here on the acoustic, and the whole sing just has a really good mood to it.

Track seven is easily my least favourite song on Retro Active, Only After Dark. This is a cover of a Mick Ronson song that was “updated and given the profile we felt it always deserved”. This song is a decent jam, but it just doesn’t do very much for me ultimately. This was released as a B-Side for the Let’s Get Rocked single, so I guess that whole single was a little disappointing ultimately. This is a cool enough song, but even at just under 4 minutes I feel like it goes on too long for the limited ideas presented. Rest In Peace Mick Ronson.

Track eight is the ultimate version of Ride Into the Sun. This is a slight update from the Hysteria B-Side. This has an added Honky Tonk piano intro by Ian Hunter of Mott the Hoople and David Bowie fame. Other than that, we have a better snare sound added in June of 93. I don’t really have much I can say about this song, because the write up from the Hysteria B-Sides thread was pretty much all that needs to be said.

Track nine is an oddity known only as From The Inside. According to the liner notes, this song was originally written by Joe when he was asked to perform with the Hothouse Flowers for a late night TV Show. The two bands loved the song, and it appeared as a B-Side to Have You Ever Needed Someone So Bad. This is a really intriguing song, written about addiction from the point of view of the drugs. It’s an odd one to be sure, but a really welcome one. I don’t think Leppard has another song that sounds like this, for better or for worse, but the song itself is actually really good. This showed up a fair few times on the Adrenalize tour and then showed up for some acoustic performances in 95, 96 and 2004. Statistically speaking, this is the most played song on Retro Active apart from Two Steps Behind.

Track ten and eleven both also emerge from the Hysteria sessions, Ring of Fire and I Wanna Be Your Hero. Ring of Fire has a way better intro for the Retro Active version, and I feel like the clean guitar swells within the second verse are a lot more crisp. This is a really great song, which saw a few live performances as a concert opener on the X tour. The liner notes say that this song was “inspired by… ahh, you don’t want to know”. If I don’t want to know writes songs this good, then keep doing whatever it is we don’t get to know about!
I Wanna Be Your Hero was originally written under the name Love Bites, but the title was stolen and used for a much different song (which for me is kinda inferior). This version has a bit of a different intro, which brings the little lead guitar fills in a little earlier. This song is still a banger and should’ve been on Hysteria for my money. The drums for both of these songs have been re-recorded and both songs were enhanced with more guitars (like that banging intro riff for Ring of Fire!) and chorus vocals in 1993. The issue I had with Hero on the B-Side version is removed and we get a proper fade out this time. Love it!

Track twelve is the original electric version of Miss You In A Heartbeat. The opening guitar swells are a thing of total beauty and this version of the song is actually the one I think I would tend to gravitate towards for an actual album, as it just has a great vibe. Joe’s delivery on this is actually even a bit cleaner to me than that of the main version. The solo here is your run of the mill Phil, but that’s kinda what this version called for. I just really like this.

The closing track is a full band take on Joe’s original demo of Two Steps Behind, and I actually love the fact that this is the closing track for no other reason than we actually get a Vivian Campbell guitar solo! This version of Two Steps Behind actually fundamentally changes the song, removing the main chord progression outside of the chorus. Rick’s drumming feels a little too drum machine like, but he chucks in a few cool fills here and there. Joe’s vocals on this version are nowhere near as good as they are on the main version of the song, but you get that. The whole song builds to that guitar solo, and even if it’s a little short, it’s a great intro to Vivian in the band and kinda reassures us that the band is in safe hands with him. One could almost view this whole album as a concept about Def Leppard learning to become a band again without Steve and looking into the future by letting go of these old songs once and for all. In doing so, I think it’s an amazing release.

Now, see, after the closing track, there’s a hidden bonus track of just Joe’s piano and vocal for Miss You In A Heartbeat. It’s kinda same old same old after you’ve heard the main version. However, I’m instead going to touch on another song that was released only on the greatest hits collection in 1995, since it doesn’t really have another chance to come into play. That song is called When Love and Hate Collide, from Vault. Why include it here? Well, it was said in an interview with Joe in 1995 that putting this song and the compilation as a whole out was to completely close the door on the Steve Clark before they put out Slang. When Love and Hate Collide is a very pretty sounding ballad which still makes its way out from time to time, mostly recently being played as part of the encore to the Hysteria 2018 tour. It’s your standard power ballad affair for Leppard, and this is actually one of their biggest songs in the UK. This one never did anything much for me, but I can see why it still gets attention.

So, Retro Active. It actually feels unfair to rate this album as it is a collection of leftovers, much as I couldn’t rate leftover spaghetti bolognaise as a new meal. We have, in fact, already discussed three of these tracks during this deep dive already. But in looking at it now, and not being a live album, I kinda have to give it a rating. One would think that being a bunch of leftover songs would tend to mean that it shouldn’t deserve to be ranked higher than any proper album, but I think it genuinely is. I also realised that I didn’t give Adrenalize a rating, so I’m giving that a 3.75. Retro Active, I think I’m gonna give it a 4.5. This really holds up, flows well as an album and serves as a critical milestone in the band’s career.

And with the changing of the guard taken care of, we get to start the Vivian Campbell era. Join me on Monday for a discussion of the oft-maligned Slang!

This is so spot on!

Count me in as a huge fan of "Desert Song," and I can't wait to hear your thoughts on "Slang" (an album I quite enjoy)

Offline HOF

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Re: Deadeye21’s Def Leppard Deep Dive
« Reply #128 on: May 14, 2022, 01:19:06 PM »
I’ve only heard Slang once, but I thought there was some cool stuff on it. Will have to check it out again.

Offline TAC

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Re: Deadeye21’s Def Leppard Deep Dive
« Reply #129 on: May 14, 2022, 04:05:14 PM »

Retro Active - 1993
Vault - 1995

Tracklisting - 1. Desert Song. 2. Fractured Love. 3. Action. 4. Two Steps Behind5. She’s Too Tough. 6. Miss You In A Heartbeat. 7. Only After Dark. 8. Ride Into The Sun. 9. From the Inside. 10. Ring of Fire. 11. I Wanna Be Your Hero12. Miss You In A Heartbeat (Electric Version). 13. Two Steps Behind (Electric Version) 14. Miss You In A Jeartbeat (Acoustic Version).
1. When Love and Hate Collide.


First off, Retroactive has a great cover!

I never bothered with it. Hysteria B-sides, movie soundtrack tunes and odds and ends.
I had the Hysteria B-sides, and I wasn't buying them again. I also had the Last Action Hero soundtrack.

The riff in Desert Song reminds me of China White. Considering what Def Leppard had become at this point, yeah, anyone would have to be happy with this.

I'd never heard She's Too Tough before. Joe's 80's vocal is awesome. This is a cool tune.

And yeah, From The Inside is really interesting.


Oh, and I love Action. I'm a huge Sweet fan as well. Love Phil's solo in this.
would have thought the same thing but seeing the OP was TAC i immediately thought Maiden or DT related
Winger Theater Forums........or WTF.  ;D
TAC got a higher score than me in the electronic round? Honestly, can I just drop out now? :lol

Offline Deadeye21

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Re: Deadeye21’s Def Leppard Deep Dive
« Reply #130 on: May 14, 2022, 06:06:03 PM »

Are the "Accoustic Hippies From Hell" actually the Hothouse Flowers? Who is credited instrumentally?

BTW, the Hothouse Flowers are fucking awesome!

More or less, yeah. I think that’s the combination of Leppard and Hothouse Flowers, who also did You Can’t Always Get What You Want and Little Wing for the Have You Ever Needed Someone So Bad single. Credited in the liner notes are Vivian, Phil, Sav and Joe with Fiachna O Braonain on tin whistle, Liam O Maonlai on grand piano and Peter O’Toole on mandolin.
Let's go with a P for Deadeye has premature alphabetejaculation.

Offline Deadeye21

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Re: Deadeye21’s Def Leppard Deep Dive
« Reply #131 on: May 16, 2022, 08:09:11 AM »
Slang - 1996

Tracklisting - 1. Truth?. 2. Turn to Dust. 3. Slang. 4. All I Want Is Everything. 5. Work It Out. 6. Breathe a Sigh. 7. Deliver Me. 8. Gift of Flesh. 9. Blood Runs Cold. 10. Where Does Love Go When It Dies. 11. Pearl of Euphoria.

Album:
https://open.spotify.com/album/1P6GUw6ld7D5YvKDL0vmTU?si=lyBZ3QzvQ8CErY46Z7Fv4w
Commentary:
https://open.spotify.com/album/5pygPiFFauRR4cklfOLEav?si=thkr4K7yRhC4kUEQ71uSxQ

After Adrenalize, the world of rock really started to change. Grunge bands like Nirvana, Soundgarden and Stone Temple Pilots were starting to take prominence and totally change the sound of the 90s. Having now closed the door on the Steve Clark era, it was time for Def Leppard to do something really different for their first album with Vivian Campbell.

If you want a mixed bag, my friends, allow me to introduce you to Slang.

The change in sound is very evident from the first song, Truth?. While kicking off with a beautiful clean intro, this is a rocker with a very different vibe. This is a lot more open and vast, letting the drums and vocals take the focus. We get a good tension in the chorus and a really good release in the bridge after a short solo. All of this done in 3 minutes too. But you can already tell this is going to be something very different, instead of your usual Let It Go, Let’s Get Rocked type type of opener.

The experimental sound gets really drawn to light with the second track, Turn to Dust. This song draws heavily from Middle Eastern influences, using much different instrumentation to your typical guitars, bass and drums. The chorus brings out a bit more of the typical Leppard group vocal. This is a song that I have to be in just the right mood for, but if I am, this really hits a spot. I feel like it’s a little overlong in some of the instrumental passages though.

Slang is the title track and easily the most popular off of the album. This song is on many of the greatest hits compilations and has made it to multiple live releases. It’s an iconic track for Leppard post Hysteria. Really catchy, almost rapped vocals and a big singalong chorus. I’m sure most of you know this song if you’ve heard much post-80s Leppard.

All I Want Is Everything is one of the biggest contenders for best song on the album. This is a ballad, but with a slight edge to it thanks to the guitar tone (I actually really love this tone). The big Leppard chorus is here and the lyrics are so deep and personal. The demo of this song on the iTunes Exclusive track shows that this song used to be a fairly standard Leppard affair, with the standard guitar hooks you’ve come to expect. Ultimately I’m so glad it didn’t become that, because this song is just so at home on the Slang album.

Work It Out is Vivian Campbell’s very first composition for Def Leppard. While the song evolved from the ballad form it was in when the song was originally penned, this is a real groover of a song. Joe gets to do something really different with his vocals, the chorus is great and we get one of my favourite moments of this entire album on this song with Sav’s Wah drenched bass solo. This one kinda finds it groove and stays there for most of the song, but this makes for a good song.

Breathe a Sigh is 4 minutes of a rock band playing R&B. It’s really not my favourite, but believe it or not it somehow works. This chorus really sticks in my head and the key change is really well implemented. Joe’s vocal sits in a real sweet spot, and the whole track just sounds really great. Not my favourite, as I’ve never been an R&B fan, but the Leppard group vocal is so smooth and I just have to love it. The evolution of the guitar work throughout the track also really elevates this. Not my least favourite, but not up the top. 

Deliver Me is a band saying “enough is enough”. The instrumental to the track sounds really grunge driven, and the lyrics paint a picture of just being done with people’s crap. “Excuse me, but I don’t remember, where were you when I needed you most”. The writing for Slang came at a dark time for the band as people, going through divorces and family deaths, so it’s interesting to see the band finally just snap. The whole track has a huge tense vibe, which has a really nice release when the solo section kicks in. Not your typical Leppard track, but a pretty quintessential look into the sound of 1996 in my opinion.

Gift of Flesh is the point where we get back to familiar territory for Def Leppard. This is balls to the wall rocking the whole way through. Kicking off with a tight paced ascending scale and then going into the main riff which rhythmically reminds me of Rock! Rock!, this is just a great song. According to Joe’s commentary (which you can find at the second link above), this song was written about the oil crisis at the time. Any way you cut this, it’s a huge song for Def Leppard. This features some absolutely awesome soloing and the tension riff just before that reminds me of Time and Motion by Rush, which was released the same year. In revisiting this album for this deep dive, I’ve rediscovered this song and I think this is one that will stay pretty high up for me if we do a ranking at the end of this (though admittedly we’d need more people to play along for that and I don’t know if you’d all be keen anyway). This song is pretty much my favourite for the album.

Blood Runs Cold is, to my ear, a sequel to White Lightning from Adrenalize.   This song deals with the other side of addiction, where White Lightning dealt with the individual with their addictions, Blood Runs Cold is a song that speaks from the point of view of friends and family watching an addict struggle. Joe’s vocal really sells the emotion of the song, especially in the chorus and bridge. The whole band is in great form for this one, with a huge ambient vibe to the guitars. In the commentary track, Joe reveals that while Phil wrote the opening verse, this got him so emotional that he turned it over to Joe to complete. You can see the change of lyric style between the two verses, but the song stays consistent.

Where Does Love Go When It Dies is the second to last song for the album. It’s another ballad, but it’s really pretty. The lyrics here are the focal point, asking questions if anything could ever be enough when it comes to love. I feel like this could also be written from the same emotions as Blood Runs Cold, asking where love goes when someone passes on. I wish the song could have given us the answers, because I can really relate. The acoustic guitars sound beautiful here, and the final piece of electric guitar feedback leads us straight into the closing song. This one never got played in full live, which is a bummer, but we do get a bit of it in the Acoustic Medley from 2012.

Pearl of Euphoria is an abstract closer, but an effective one. There’s a definite vibe to this song, with lead guitar swells showing up here and there. The whole song is a build up to the ending, but it all really works for me. There are great moments of almost clashing guitar leads instead of a traditional guitar solo, leading to some great guitar harmonics and then the whole thing up just ends with about 2 and a half minutes of the title line fading out into oblivion, which is about a minute too long for me now. This is obscure, but for some reason this was my absolute favourite song from the album when I first head it in 2014. I was a weird kid. Sorry if this is a revelation.

So, that’s Slang. A solid ride from start to end, and one I tend to enjoy more and more each time I listen to it. I’ll give it a solid 4, as even though this isn’t classic Def Leppard back at it again in 1996, this is something I can really sink my teeth into and take something new out of every time. If you haven’t heard it either in a while or at all, give this one a listen. I kinda dreaded coming back to this one, but it’s really really good when you come at it with a different perspective. This is probably the album like Metallica’s Load or Dream Theater’s The Astonishing where, if it had been someone else, this album would be an absolute highlight in their career but it suffers in comparison because it is a big band for completely different music.

Join me tomorrow for a look at some of the deluxe edition content. Wednesday will be Euphoria and Friday will be X. Hopefully that gives us enough time to get all the way through before Diamond Star Halos, but if not it just means the new album writeup won’t be a  first listen review. 
« Last Edit: May 16, 2022, 08:18:10 AM by Deadeye21 »
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Offline TAC

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Re: Deadeye21’s Def Leppard Deep Dive
« Reply #132 on: May 16, 2022, 02:37:02 PM »
Slang - 1996

Tracklisting - 1. Truth?. 2. Turn to Dust. 3. Slang. 4. All I Want Is Everything. 5. Work It Out. 6. Breathe a Sigh. 7. Deliver Me. 8. Gift of Flesh. 9. Blood Runs Cold. 10. Where Does Love Go When It Dies. 11. Pearl of Euphoria.


I gave this a listen the other day have never heard it before.

The first three songs might be the worst three song run in their catalog up to this point.


All I Want Is Everything has a cool vibe and feel to it, even though it's mellow.

Deliver Me is actually really cool and Gift Of Flesh (what an awful title) actually rocks pretty good. Probably my fave on the album.

This isn't a great album by any stretch, but I'm just glad it's not the overproduced shlock of Hysteria and Adrenalize.
would have thought the same thing but seeing the OP was TAC i immediately thought Maiden or DT related
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Offline Deadeye21

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Re: Deadeye21’s Def Leppard Deep Dive
« Reply #133 on: May 17, 2022, 07:25:59 AM »
Slang Deluxe Edition Content - Recorded 1995-1996 / Released 2014

Tracklisting - 1. Move With Me Slowly. 2. Truth? (Original Version). 3. Burn Out.4. Worlds Collide. 5. Can’t Keep Away From the Flame. 6. All On Your Touch. 7. Move On Up.

In 2012, rumours were a buzz from Def Leppard that a reissue of Slang was in the works, since the rights to the album were set to revert to the band for the first time since 1996. Joe Elliott was even playing the song Burn Out on radio stations, claiming that it would soon see the light of day on the new re-release. A year or so passed until January 2014 when it was officially announced that the album would be officially reissued in February that year. The physical issue featured 2 CDs, the first containing five songs that has been previously released along with the official album and the second containing rough mixes and early drafts.

In this writeup, I’m going to look at 7 of these tracks, which are the five main  B-Sides and two oddities from the second disc that are worth looking into.

Starting off, we have Move With Me Slowly. This song was an exclusive bonus track on the original Japanese release of Slang. This is actually a pretty good song with a few extended jams. This one starts with a slow melodic rock groove in the first verse and chorus, then kicks up a bit for the remainder of the song. This actually would have been a great closer to the album if Pearl of Euphoria didn’t make the official release. There’s a cool back and forth in the choruses that sounds like Phil starts it off before Joe finishes it off. From about the 4:10 mark onwards, this song becomes an extended jam with a lot of great guitar leads filling up the remaining time. This whole thing takes up about 6 odd minutes, and if you’re not into jamming, I can see that this would get a bit long for some, but I really appreciate hearing the band like this.

Next song is Truth?, or more so the original version. This opens with an extended version of the clean intro from the album version, but from there on, this really hasn’t got much in common. The vocals are a lot more immediately in your face and the guitars take up a much more dominant position in the song as a whole. There are a lot of great fills here too. The tension in the pre-chorus is huge, and the bridge on this one is almost prog metal. The solos are great, and I love that the bridge breaks right down to the raw vocal over the bass and drums with the intro kicking back in underneath. If there’s one complaint to be had in this version, it’s that the vocal isn’t super well mixed and is often buried underneath the wall of guitars. The riff itself almost reminds me of You Not Me by Dream Theater somehow. This one was released as a B-Side to the Work It Out single and I think I prefer this version to the official one.

Next up is Burn Out. This has a great vibe to it. To an extent, I could see this as almost a Let’s Get Rocked ‘96.  The guitar scratches between the verse and pre-chorus are really good, and the riffing here is really great in general. The pre-chorus is a little hard to make out the lyrics to, but still gets stuck in my head from time to time. The solo section has a great main solo, but the usual rhythm guitar is almost a lead track in itself and then there are wah scratches starting underneath as the solo gets to an end. I think if this was on the album after Gift of Flesh, I really wouldn’t have hated that. This whole song is just fun and I think that’s kinda what was missing from a lot of Slang songs overall. Weirdly enough, this song was released much later as a B-Side to Goodbye from Euphoria.

The same can be said for Worlds Collide, which was released as a B-Side to Promises. The riff here doesn’t take my interest anywhere near as much as Burn Out’s did, but for me the chorus is something I always wanted to hear from a band with as many multi-vocal parts as Def Leppard, where the lead lines are followed by harmonised responses. The bridge is also really nice. There’s a lot of flanger sounding effects in the chorus and bridge guitars which is a bit overly noticeable in spots, but it makes this song kinda distinct. I actually really like this song for the chorus alone.

Next up is Can’t Keep Away From The Flame, which was released as the Japanese bonus track for Vault in 1995. This is a little acoustic ditty and it’s quite a nice sounding track. This doesn’t really have a whole lot of substance to it, but I do really like the little lead runs from the guitars, especially the main one after the second chorus. The vocal harmonies in the second and third choruses are really prominent as you’d hope from an acoustic track. This is probably my least favourite of the officially released tracks, but it’s a nice way to kill two and a half minutes.

On to some standout oddities from the second disc. All On Your Touch is a ballad written by Vivian Campbell that never made it to an official release until this deluxe edition, which is a shame. This is actually a really great sounding ballad with a really pretty guitar tone. The chorus brings in a bit more distortion, but has a nice release back into the cleans for the rest of the track. The nice open soul to the guitar solo is almost reminiscent of Love Bites, the vocals  are really nice with really well written melodies. This song easily could have been on the album right between Gift of Flesh and Blood Runs Cold. It’s another shorter track but it’s really good and, if it had been given time to be realised fully, I reckon this could’ve been a classic.

The last track I want to look at is called Move On Up. This is really rough, the lyrics are clearly not finished all the way yet, probably not even fully recorded as a band, but it’s just a really cool little oddity to have. This is another Vivian Campbell song, but this actually features Viv’s vocal. The guitars feature a lot of slide, which is really unique. I din’t know, but I feel like this could have been really cool if it had been properly worked on. Give it a spin, even if it’s just for the novelty of hearing something a bit different for the first time.


Well, with Burn Out and Worlds Collide having been B-Sides for Euphoria singles, it’s time to look into that next. Join me tomorrow for a look the band’s last release for the millennium.
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Offline Deadeye21

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Re: Deadeye21’s Def Leppard Deep Dive
« Reply #134 on: May 18, 2022, 07:38:42 AM »
Euphoria - 1999
Tracklisting - 1. Demolition Man. 2. Promises. 3. Back In Your Face. 4. Goodbye. 5. All Night. 6. Paper Sun. 7. It’s Only Love. 8. 21st Century Sha La La La Girl. 9. To Be Alive. 10. Disintegrate. 11. Guilty. 12. Day After Day. 13. Kings of Oblivion.

https://open.spotify.com/album/7EAgGLOZoYNm5P5rF5IjV2?si=X4AlA-XxT_iyQLmVnRnXpA

Write, record, tour and then maybe a little time off. That’s the way it was finally starting to go for Def Leppard, the way that it always has for many bands. When the Slang tour officially ended in April of 1997  they took a little time off, coming back for just one show in Mumbai in 1998. In April of that same year, the band found themselves trying to decide what direction to go in. Slang hadn’t been all that they had hoped for, but they decide that 8 years was long enough to have left their signature sound behind. Mutt Lange came back for a few days and helped to co-write a few of the songs from the album, but did not return to the producer’s chair.

So, is this album a return to form or will it be another oddity? Let’s dive in head first to Def Leppard’s final release for the 20th Century, Euphoria!

We start off with Demolition Man. And while the opening sounds are a bit different, this is actually a really solid opener. “Let me loose, I just got back” is the opening lyric, and it does feel like they’re actually back. This is a really upbeat rocker that brings me back to the feeling of Adrenalize, but being a much better song while it does. The ending solo is performed by Formula One champion Damon Hill which is a pretty cool tidbit about this song. It feels like we really have a Def Leppard album on our hands, unlike Truth? did the album prior. The group vocal is back in the chorus, the guitar work is all there and I’m settled in for a good time!

Second song in, and we have one of my favourites post-Hysteria called Promises. This song actually feels like Photograph for a new era in my opinion. Unsurprisingly, this is one of Mutt’s contributions to the album. I love the riff, I love the blend between the band vocal and Joe’s lead,. I love the production of the track! This is just a really good song. This was the first single released for the album, and if I had been into Leppard back in the day, I reckon this would have had me buzzing for the new album straight off the bat. The huge high note that Joe hits towards the end of the song is fantastic and I think that sums this song up. A fantastic high note.

It’s kind of a shame that almost immediately go too far in the opposite direction. Back In Your Face is just devoid of good musical ideas and the lyrics are pretty poor. There’s not even a solo to really lift this song into second gear. It’s almost a point of arrogance. I guess I like the guitar tone if I’m really pushing to give this song a good point, but this song is entirely skippable for me. The end of the song tries to recapture some of the magic of Rocket by name dropping Sheer Heart Attack and Jumpin’ Jack Flash, but their use here is entirely unearned and out of place. Just. Meh.

Goodbye goes back to a bit of a Slang ballad vibe for me, and I actually really appreciate it. Joe’s vocal really leads the song along and it sounds really good. The group vocal on this one is more prominent than it was on Slang, but it’s great to see they didn’t fully abandon that sound when they chose to go back to their signature sound from the older albums. The chorus is a huge hook and it hits really well. This is Rick Savage’s very first solo writing credit and I have to say, if this is how he operates on his own, give me some more!

All Night is weird, ok?  This is sounding like it wants to be Excitable 2, almost the kind of song you’d hear in an adult film. It just doesn’t fully come together for me and the verses feel awful. The chorus is pretty good though, the one part of this song that isn’t terrible. The less said about this song the better, I’m sorry to say.

Following that is Paper Sun, my second favourite Def Leppard song of all time. This could actually be a spiritual successor to Billy’s Got a Gun, except I think it’s better. The intro is cinematic as anything and the ebb and flow between the subdued verses and bombastic chorus makes this song flow so well. The song was written about the Omagh bobbing in Northern Ireland in 1998 and the song really captures the vibe well. The last lick to Phil’s solo at the end of the song is one of my all time favourite guitar licks, the chorus is huge and this song is my number one on songs I want to see live for myself. This was recorded live on Hits Vegas and I’m so glad it was, because this one doesn’t show up all that often, which I think is pretty criminal.

It’s Only Love takes us back into the ballady pop rock territory that Leppard are no strangers to. While the opening “na na” stuff is a bit meh, I think the chorus is actually really awesome. There is a really deep vibe to this song, almost a cross between Hysteria and Slang. I really like the guitar tones in this one too, a bit of bite and a bit of shimmer as well. Good groove and a well written lyric. Deep cut from an oft-overlooked album, which is a shame, but this is really good.

21st Century Sha La La La Girl wins the award for most needlessly long title. This has a strong guitar hook and a good use of group vocal in the chorus. Big rocker vibe with more of that quick paced vocal from Slang. Not bad, but maybe a little forgettable. The pre-chorus is pretty catchy too, but the main thing for me on this one is the guitar work. This solo is super trippy due to what’s behind it. I like this one, but it’s not super high on the list for Euphoria tracks so far. This is kinda the point where it becomes obvious that so many of these songs are really short for me too. Out of 8 songs, only 4 of them have even hit the 4 minute mark so far, and there’s plenty more short tracks to come.

To Be Alive walks the line between a cover and an original track, as this was written by Vivian Campbell in his side band called Clock. This has an extremely 80s vibe. The intro reminds me of a Time After Time vibe, where the chorus has that typical 80s film soundtrack sound. I wouldn’t call this a bad song at all, but it’s not really what I listen to Def Leppard for. Cool little track to check out though. The production on the bass and drums in the verses sound kinda like hold music which makes me have a little smirk.

Disintegrate is Def Leppard’s second ever instrumental, this one being Phil Collen’s writing in comparison to Steve Clark’s Switch 625 on High ‘n’ Dry. For me, this feels like a bit of an action movie training montage before the hero goes into action. This has been used from time to time as an intro to Def Leppard concerts, but never played live outside of Collen’s solo sets on the G3 tour in 2018 (with Petrucci and Satriani). I like this though, really cool vibe and it’s been in my own playlists for many years.

Guilty is up next and I don’t know what to make of this one. The intro riff is pretty cool, and the chorus is really good, but the verses are very non-distinct. I almost get a Pink Floyd Run Like Hell vibe from the verse guitar patterns, but I wouldn’t know how else to describe it. It’s a really nice song, but it’s hard to say much about it, if that makes any sense. Check it out for yourself, I really didn’t hate this.

Day After Day starts with a really interesting twin guitar thing, and then builds up into something very different. Weirdly, the heavier verse and chorus riff  reminds me of Mirror Mirror, while the pre-chorus reminds me of one of the riffs from Too Late For Love. This feels like the point where older style riffs are met with the more modern style vocals and I actually really like the union. At 2:27, roughly the halfway point, we’re met with a killer guitar hook into an even cooler solo. I wish that version of the riff had gotten to stick around a lot longer as it really caught my ear almost immediately. The last minute of soloing is intense and a real great ending to the song. I’m going to listen to this one a lot more, as it’s a proper banger.

Kings of Oblivion is the closing track and I actually really really like this song. The little lead riff that’s buried is awesome, and I love the almost hybrid vocal that Joe utilises here, going into the old school screech before dropping back into the modern mid-range vocal. This is a baller of a song, really well paced and structured. This is another one really heightened by the guitar work, especially the harmonised guitar leads that lead into the closing verse. I feel like there’s almost a sense that this could have been the last album from the bridge talking about watching the sun going down for the last time. This is a great song to close the album out on and might be one of the best closers overall for Leppard.

So that’s Euphoria. I said for Slang that it was a mixed bag, but man this album makes that sound like an absolute lie. There are a few absolutely stellar songs here, and then there are some real clunkers, but between those are songs I don’t even know how to feel about. For two of my favourites and two of my absolute bottom tracks to come from the same album feels very weird to me, so I don’t even know how to rank it.  Slang took a 4, and this album is definitely not as good, but anything lower feels like a disservice to the best songs on this album. I think this deserves a 3.5 overall.

Up next is the 8th album, X. Catch ya Friday. 
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Offline HOF

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Re: Deadeye21’s Def Leppard Deep Dive
« Reply #135 on: May 18, 2022, 08:08:03 AM »
I don’t think I’ve ever actually listened through to Euphoria, but at the time I loved the radio tracks (Promises, Goodbye, and Paper Sun). I thought it was really cool to hear them go back to that sound at a time when hair metal and anything 80s was still kind of frowned upon. In the coming years I think a lot of those bands saw a bit of a revival, and I remember there being a general sense of “hey, remember Def Leppard?” that followed this release. I remember Bon Jovi also had a bit of a comeback album the following year with Crush, but I thought that album was pretty awful. What I’ve heard from Euphoria was much stronger by comparison.


Offline Deadeye21

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Re: Deadeye21’s Def Leppard Deep Dive
« Reply #136 on: May 18, 2022, 08:18:11 AM »
I recommend Kings of Oblivion, man. Really worth a go!
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Offline WilliamMunny

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Re: Deadeye21’s Def Leppard Deep Dive
« Reply #137 on: May 18, 2022, 10:02:54 AM »
Man, I've been slammed at work, so I haven't had time to chime in...but seriously, I am thoroughly enjoying these write-ups!

Slang — I was a first-day buyer, and to this day, I think there are 6 fantastatic tracks, and 5 I really never need to hear again.

Euphoria — The same, 6 amazing songs, and 6 I'm really not into.

From this era, I consider "Paper Sun," "Trust," "Promises," and "Work It Out" all-time classics.

Offline TAC

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Re: Deadeye21’s Def Leppard Deep Dive
« Reply #138 on: May 18, 2022, 12:58:30 PM »
Euphoria was pimped pretty hard to me. I promised Samsara I'd give it a listen years ago, and well...it didn't do it for me. I'll give it a shot either tonight or tomorrow and report back.
would have thought the same thing but seeing the OP was TAC i immediately thought Maiden or DT related
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TAC got a higher score than me in the electronic round? Honestly, can I just drop out now? :lol

Offline Zoom E

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Re: Deadeye21’s Def Leppard Deep Dive
« Reply #139 on: May 18, 2022, 06:45:26 PM »
Adrenalize and Slang were so uninspired, and downright dreadful at times, that I pretty much gave up on Leppard after Slang. I will give Euphoria a listen tomorrow as I have never checked it out before.