I thought Def Leppard had appeared on this list before, but apparently not. Iron Maiden have had two albums already, and Judas Priest another, but this third arm of the NWOBHM family are making their first appearance. Despite there being a track on here called Die Hard the Hunter, and despite the cover image with exploding skyscrapers in a crosshair, this album was released five years before the first Die Hard film.
Initially the sound brings to mind AC/DC on the track Rock Rock Til You Drop, singer Joe Elliott’s voice especially sounding like AC/DC’s Brian Johnson. Def Leppard have a new guitarist - Phil “not to be confused with Phil Collins” Collen who does some polished riff work and a bit of soloing that’s good but not enough to me to have an unmistakeable sound, stand-out being the track Stagefright.
Also memorable, the track Rock of Ages has the "Gunter Glieben Glauten Globen" count-in later (re)used by The Offspring for Pretty Fly (For a White Guy). The phrase “It’s better to burn out than to fade away” in the lyrics to this track has a heritage from Neil Young (My My Hey Hey Out Of The Blue) through Highlander to Kurt Cobain’s suicide note.
It occurred to me, though, during the track Photograph (which sounds a bit like Boston’s More than a Feeling from 1976), that this really sounds like it’s the start of the “hair metal” sound of the Eighties, much closer to USA groups than the normally crunchier British sound. The soundscape is more polished, more trebly and less bassy.
This may be thanks to the producer Robert John “Mutt” Lange, since a look at his other credits – Heart, Bryan Adams, Michael Bolton, Nickelback for example – shows his radio-friendly approach that smooths out all of the edges. And not just radio-friendly. MTV-friendly as well. I do wonder if the impact of MTV has begun to influence the style of the music being made, because getting exposure on that channel is a fast-track to success. If the Seventies had the studios getting their artists addicted to cocaine in order to fuel their music production, perhaps the Eighties can be characterised as pandering to MTV executives.
The album is okay, but it did make me realise that as far as hard rock / heavy metal goes, to me it sounds better a bit rough, closer to the Seventies sounds than this new polished feel. It’ll be interesting to see how many other rock bands adopt this style, and who continues down a grittier path.
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