Def Leppard couldn’t win no matter what they did. Seen as one of the poster bands of everything that was wrong with 80’s hard rock they took a fall when grunge hit. They would have been killed had they done another sugary coated Adrenalize so they took a chance and went the other way. Well somewhat. Old school fans had shouted from the rafters for years that the band had lost their hard rock roots. The ultimate sin……..chicks dug them in bucketloads. So they actually stripped back the layers so it sounded like a real band again. What happens, well they get shit for doing that too.
I saw the Slang tour and you could tell the band were adjusting to their new environment. It wasn’t that the new songs weren’t any good cause they were they just sounded different. I suppose a rock sometimes was definitely out of the question. The album itself to me still sounds great. The only track that’s Hysteria sounding Leppard is the title track. Truth, Turn To Dust and Pearl of Euphoria take a little getting used to. Work It Out is a great song written solely by Vivian Campbell. Gift of Flesh rocks. Where Does Love Go When It Dies is one of the best ballads the band ever wrote.
So do the extra tracks add anything. Well for one there’s a lot of them, some b-sides and unreleased demo tracks. Don’t be fooled by the new titled songs on disc 2 as the majority of them are the same as on the finished album just with different lyrics in the chorus. For the uber fan there is a lot here though. Casual fans or even old school High ‘N’ Dry geeks made up their mind about this album a long time ago.
In finishing I am surprised this got a makeover. There aren’t many multi-platinum hard rock bands from the eighties chomping at the bit to revisit albums that hardly set the world afire in the nineties. Packaging as always for the Leps is great with sleeve notes from Joe and tons of pics. It’s an album worth a listen again with fresh ears. This one is not as contrived as the follow up Euphoria and for a band like this was a brave move.
