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Def Leppard - X
By Scott Bazzett

I don't know what it is with some of these bands. Do you eventually get to 
old to rock? Do they look back and think their older material is too heavy 
and too loud? Is it an age thing? I don't think so. At least not entirely. 
There are bands like Saxon and Iron Maiden that have been doing it just as 
long and haven't lost a step. So while age will take it's toll on most 
bands eventually, that's not the problem here. What happened to Def 
Leppard is much worse. One of the worst things that can happen to a rock 
band... Commercial success.

It's killed many rock bands and it always starts with a ballad. It only 
takes one. Then all of a sudden you get some major radio support, your 
song reaches the masses and it's adopted into the mainstream culture. 
What's wrong with that, you ask? Nothing. It's what every band strives 
for, and if they say they don't want that, then they're lying. The problem 
comes, when getting on the radio becomes more important than the music 
that you're trying to get on the radio. It's fascinating really. For some 
bands it happens early and others can go on for years before it happens to 
them. I'll give you some examples. (Bare with me for a minute, I'm making 
a point.)

Firehouse. They were a great rock band once. They had everything it takes 
to be a great rock band and sometimes that includes a good ballad. They 
had that too, right on their first cd. It did well for them and all of a 
sudden the second cd gets two or three ballads, the third album is half 
ballads and before you know it, where there used to be one ballad, you're 
now lucky to get one heavy song. It happened quickly to them. Farewell 
Firehouse... On the other side of the spectrum is a band like the Scorpions. 
They were a legitimate rock band for years, decades even. And they had 
ballads in that time, but they weren't hits, just good ballads. Then some 
fifteen years into their career they release the ballad Winds of Change. 
It's a huge hit, the radio plays the hell out of it, and all of a sudden 
everybody is a scorpions fan. Of course most of those people have no idea 
that the Scorpions have like a dozen or so other albums that came out 
before this one, but who cares? Anyway the Scorpions albums have gotten 
weaker and weaker ever since. The list could go on and on. And it's not 
just metal bands, it happens to all genres. One of the most notable is 
probably the Goo Goo Dolls. Talk to some of their original fans. The Goo 
Goo Dolls were a heavy punk style band on Metal Blade records, then they 
got a radio hit and never looked back. Anyway, my point is, whether it's 
the artists themselves or the record labels or a combination of the two, 
once they've tasted that radio success, anything less is a failure. And 
when a band's goal shifts from striving to make a good rock album to 
trying to come up with songs that might get played on the radio, something 
gets lost. And when you factor in the odds of trying to get a rock single 
on the radio as opposed to a ballad, you can see why more and more of 
their songs start slowing down. And this is what has happened to Def 
Leppard. (I told you I'd get back to Def Leppard) They've lost their edge. 
In fact the only thing about them duller than their edge, is this cd. Now 
I'm not saying that this cd sucks. It's very... nice. It sounds good, and 
everyone played their parts well and the production is good, it's just... 
well, it's boring. There is no recognizable trace of the band that 
recorded Pyromania on this cd. It's a very radio friendly, watered down, 
white bread, plain album. All of the songs start to sound the same. And 
they aren't bad songs (mostly) they're just rehashing the same formula 
over and over again. They're like cookie cutter songs. At least the last 
cd had a couple of faster songs on it to balance out the ballads, but this 
one... not so much. The tempo stays pretty consistent throughout.

Now if you like Def Leppard, you'll probably like some of these songs, 
maybe even all of them, but in my opinion, it's all just too much of the 
same thing and I've heard it before. On a scale from 1 to 10, I give X a 
7.