August 1999 Guitar Magazine...(excerpt) Page 63: full page pic of Viv, and Phil, holding their guitars, and the story title in huge letters: ROCK OF AGES Does Def Leppard's Euphoria Signal the Long-Awaited Return of Melodic Metal? by Jon Wiederhorn ".......In 1994, when we started doing Slang, we were making a record for the marketplace that existed at the time," says (Phil) Collen in a reserved English accent. "Now that market-place doesn't exist, so we don't have to pretend (we're something we're not.) At least if we made a mistake with Slang, and I don't think that we did, it was a one-album thing. We love that record, but there's no point banging our heads against the wall. We're just as happy being the Def Leppard that did 'Let's Get Rocked' and 'Rock of Ages.'" If that's the case, then Collen, Campbell, vocalist Joe Elliott, bassist Rick Savage, and drummer Rick Allen should be grinning from ear to ear, because Def Leppard's new album, Euphoria, the third in a trilogy of "ia" records--which also included the 10-million seller Hysteria (1987) and the nearly as successful Pyromania (1983)--is a glorious assemblage of gargantuan beats, loud, ringing guitars, and resounding vocals. The first single, "Promises," is vintage Leppard, and the perfect launching point for the band's comeback, since it's most reminiscent of Pyromania's "Photograph," which sparked the band's stadium rock career many eons ago. Elsewhere, Euphoria artfully balances shitkickers like "Demolition Man," (chugging riffs, muted arpeggios, and layered Chuck Berry-style double stops) with Aerosmith-ian power ballads such as "Goodbye" (sustained chords and single, plucked notes that chime like a music box). But the most representative number on the record is "Back in Your Face." in which Elliott boasts, "I'm back in your face like I've never been away/Like a runaway mack, like a Union Jack, I'm back!" "We've totally whored ourselves out and copied our old songs, and I love," enthuses Collen. "Actually, (though) it may sound like our old stuff, a bunch of 18-year olds who don't know us are gonna hear this, and it will seem completely new to them." "The song 'Back in Your Face' is pretty tongue in cheek, but it also sums up what we're doing now," agrees Elliott, who boasts freshly cropped hair for the new millennium....... ....."Initially, we wanted to be contemporary, like what was on the radio," recalls Collen. "We tried songs that sounded a little like Natalie Imbruglia or the Spice Girls or the Fugees, and they sounded okay, but no one was getting excited about it. A lot of people at our label and at our management office were saying, 'Just be your fucking selves. Be Def Leppard.' So we wrote two songs with that in mind, '21st Century' and 'Guilty' and that set the tone for the rest of the record."..........