Def Leppard - Hysteria Review

What can I say about this album? I can still listen to it on repeat in my car after all these years. The album is such a coherent, consistent group of great tunes it sounds like a Greatest Hits CD (and everyone knows those are the ones you really listen to, unless you're a mix-maker, which is even better.)

The sound is complex and multi-layered, full of harmonies and stacked guitar riffs, and definitely on the melodic pop side of the musical scale. It's hard to even call it metal sometimes, though that's where it was classified due to the sound of Def Leppard's previous albums, but it does have plenty of driving drums and wailing guitars if you like that. This album was the very apex of 80s Arena Rock in my opinion, which sums up the fist-pumping, sing-alonging, can't-stop-moving-your-head-to-it quality that's the defining strength of Hysteria.

I would recommend this album to anyone that likes music that was written for the sake of fun and rock-n-roll. It wasn't written to make a polital statement, it wasn't even always written to make sense. So just turn it up and be young again!

NOTE: These guys still tour almost every year, and I'm always there when they hit my area of Texas. It's not often enough you find a band makes super-polished albums with super-dense harmonies and still puts on a great live show, but with these guys sure swing it. And this may not be the place to say it, but can I just give an appreciative shout-out to aging rock stars who take care of themselves and can still take off their shirts on stage without making the crowd wince and cameramen deliberately stop zooming in?