Except, that is, when the long-awaited release in question is the work of Def Leppard. This, remember, is the only major rock act that works more slowly than Bruce Springsteen. In fairness, the band's tardiness isn't entirely the product of foot dragging, as the death of guitarist Steve Clark undoubtedly slowed this album (and doubled fellow guitarist Phil Collen's workload) even more than the loss of drummer Rick Allen's arm
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complicated the completion of
Hysteria.Yet regardless of the time spent in the studio, Def Leppard's albums never seem especially labored or overwrought. If anything, the opposite is true – the band's music seems so effortlessly accessible that most listeners probably don't even notice the incredible amount of craft that goes into each release.
Nor is Adrenalize, with its insistence on intensely tuneful, unrepentantly frivolous material, likely to change that. There's no overriding concept to the album, no sense of the group's confronting its demons or wrestling with the problems of the world; instead, what we get is a seemingly unending string of energetic, hook-heavy, gosh-we-luv-'em songs about girls. A perfect Def Leppard album, in other words.
That's not meant sarcastically, either. Because truth be told, it's far easier to prop up several couplets of self-revelation with a few heavy-metal riffs than it is to turn an idea as commonplace as romantic desire into a song as memorable as "Have You Ever Needed Someone So Bad." But that's what Def Leppard does best, and Adrenalize is the band's most consistent effort to date.
Take "Have You Ever Needed Someone So Bad" as an example. Although the title pretty much sums up the idea behind the tune, the band is wise enough to recognize that when it comes to love songs, what gets said matters far less than how it gets said. Thus, the heart of the song is its melodic development, the way Joe Elliott's vocal builds from the breathy, low-key opening verse to the soaring, full-throated harmonies of the chorus. It's so perfectly paced that you hardly need to hear the lyrics to understand what the song is saying; the sound says it all.
That's typical of Def Leppard, though. From the first, this was a band that gloried in the power of heavy metal's musical gestures – the towering majesty of a power riff, the momentary freedom of a guitar break, the exhilaration of a singer's scream – and as the group has grown, its ability to manipulate that vocabulary has expanded to the point that its songs have become mini-masterpieces of aural impact.
Just listen to all the sonic detail crammed into the album-opening "Let's Get Rocked." Althoug
