Limp Leppard
It’s always difficult picking up an album from one of Music’s all time old school legends. The expectations are high and you’ll undoubtedly be left disappointed. After crawling through this self titled Def Leppard record though you’ll be wishing that it could just be left at merely being a bit disappointed. Everything on this record, from its title, the artwork and most importantly the music, feels like it’s just been phoned in. Def Leppard are way past their prime, and no one was ever expecting this to reach those kind of heights again, but to release such a piss poor excuse for an album is almost inexcusable. No one really makes money from record sales anymore, meaning that even the seasoned legends need to churn out albums in order to have a new excuse to head out on to the road. But with this record, it literally feels like Def Leppard almost felt obliged that if they were going to commit to another tour they needed to do so via a new album. The thought process clearly ended there though because as far as the music is concerned this is an absolute car crash.
Every single track sounds like that moment you wake up after falling asleep to an absolutely awful eighties US Cop film on Channel 5, and there is always that obnoxious over produced, safe as fuck, Classic Rock song blaring out at the end of the credits. Now Def Leppard haven’t always had that edge of danger or anything like that, but this album is so middle of the road you’ll struggle to even get through all of it. The opening three tracks run in at just under twelve minutes but if will feel like hours. The fact you’ve then got to make it through another eleven tracks is almost overwhelmingly daunting. This sounds like we’re coming down on Def Leppard hard, but that’s because they’ve proven in the past that they can still deliver. Even recently, some of the last few albums haven’t been that great but they’ve not been this poor. Thankfully out of the blue the band do inject a bit of energy in to it half way through with tracks like All Time High but by this point it can barely salvage much. If we’re looking at some of the lyrical content on here as well, the third track Man Enough alone will make you baulk and want to tear your hair out as Joe Elliot repeatedly asks ”Are you man enough?”. If he’s asking whether we were ‘man enough’ to turn this sack of shit off and turn our backs on Def Leppard then yes, apparently we were ‘man enough’. Awful.
Overall then, this is so far below Def Leppard’s best it is beyond disappointing. They’re out on tour soon with Whitesnake, just don’t let this record deter you from going because they still deliver it live and will more likely than not be avoiding most of this material anyway.