http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/reviews/story/0,11712,902259,00.html
Guardian Unlimited
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Def Leppard 

4 out of 5 stars 
Arena, Sheffield 

Dave Simpson 
Tuesday February 25, 2003
The Guardian 

In the mid-1990s, heavy metal seemed terminally unfashionable, swept away
by rave culture and grunge. No band suffered more than Def Leppard. Once
able to shift 50m albums, Sheffield's finest were reduced, at their lowest
point (around 1996's Slang album), to changing their winning formula to
include electronics, more modern beats and - shock, horror - short hair.
Now, thanks to nu-metal and the Osbournes, old metal can once again strut
its stuff in public without ridicule, and the Lepp have returned with
leather trousers, endless guitar solos and hairstyles beyond most city
barbers. Bassist Rick Savage even models a poodle perm.

The intro tape of We Will Rock You is no idle boast: Def Leppard's
masterstroke is returning to the blistering hard rock that made their
name. Their first four numbers are so heavy that it feels like an enormous
metal anvil has fallen through the stadium.

Anyone can rock - if not quite this hard - but the best heavy metal should
also have a certain Spinal Tapness, and here the Lepp have an unbeatable
trump card. Following drummer Rick Allen's loss of an arm in a 1984 car c
rash, they are the only band ever to boast three-and-three-quarters of
their classic line-up. However, while Allen presumably inspired Tap's
spontaneously combusting sticksmen, his big-hearted percussion gives the
crowd a true modern-day hero.

Vocalist Joe Elliott - perhaps the only Sheffield United fan resident in
Los Angeles - entertains the home crowd with believable tales of being
beaten up as a youth for wearing pointy boots, which may explain the
higher r eaches of his gravelly wail. He also manages to look
uncomfortable ("Get that scarf down!") during the acoustic ballad section.

Impressively, the band leave it almost an hour to wheel out the heavy
artillery: hits such as Pyromania and Hysteria, which ruled the charts
almost two decades ago. Songs from the recent album, entitled X, hold up
well. However, while trends have come and gone, Def Leppard's big hits -
Animal, Armageddon It, Rock of Ages, Let's Get Rocked and other songs with
"rock" in the title - still sound bigger than anybody else's. The stage is
too far away to be certain, but it seems very likely that their amps
actually go up to 12.

· At the Regent, Ipswich (01473 433100), tomorrow, and Brixton Academy,
London SW9 (020-7771 2000), on Thursday.

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