589. Def Leppard - Hysteria (1987)
















Track Listing

1. Women
2. Rocket
3. Animal
4. Love Bites
5. Pour Some Sugar On Me
6. Armageddon It
7. Gods Of War
8. Don't Shoot Shot Gun
9. Run Riot
10. Hysteria
11. Excitable
12. Love And Affection

Review

Well if you ever need to have a cock-rock/ pop-metal album this might be a good choice. Def Leppard manage to make an album which I don't dislike. Not because it is good or great quality music, but it is a competent enough piece of pop masquerading as metal to be quite enjoyable.

The album is full of famous tracks which also help, they have that particular flavour of the tackiest times of the 1980's which serve as nostalgia fodder and also a bit of fun. So this is really to be filed in the "so bad it's good" category.

There are however some good things about the album beyond it's cartoony kitschness, it is very well produced with an extremely clean sound that really allows you to appreciate it at a technical level, the lyrics are inane but quite funny and never as childish as in thrash metal. In the end enjoyable something I wouldn't mind dancing to in an 80s party, but definitely not something I want to put in my personal collection.

Track Highlights

1. Pour Some Sugar On Me
2. Animal
3. Love Bites
4. Women

Final Grade

8/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

The album's goal, set out by Lange, was to be a hard rock version of Michael Jackson's Thriller, in that every track was a potential hit single. Songs were therefore written with this concept in mind, disappointing heavy metal fans who clamored for a straight sequel to Pyromania.

Indeed, while Pyromania contained traces of heavy metal, "Hysteria" removed them in favor of the latest sonic technology available at the time (best displayed on "Rocket", "Love Bites", "Excitable", and "Gods of War").

As with Pyromania, every song was recorded by every member in the studio separately instead of the whole band. The multiple vocal harmonies were enhanced by Lange's techniques, even pitching background vocals on all tracks. Guitar parts were now focused more on emphasizing melody than hard rock's more basic and cliched riffs.

This unique approach sometimes led to painstaking lengths of time in the recording studio. The smash single, "Pour Some Sugar on Me", was the last song written but was quickly finished within two weeks. In sharp contrast, the final version of "Animal" took almost a full three years to be developed but did become one of the bigger hits from the album.

Pour Some Sugar on Me, strip club anthem extrordinaire: