adrenalize - def leppard

So in retrospect, ruminating about a 31-year-old Van Halen album probably wasn’t the freshest choice in terms of launching the site’s music section… so I decided to do something a hair more relevant for my follow-up piece - by focusing on a 30-year-old Def Leppard album instead (though my dithering in terms of actually writing and posting said piece has proven costly - as said album technically released in March of 1992, so is now also a, uh… 31-year-old album. Whoops). 

Def Leppard, of course, ascended to towering heights of rock superstardom in the 80s, thanks to the massive popularity of their albums Pyromania and Hysteria… though I had little familiarity with either growing up. Instead it was Adrenalize (their first release in the wake of guitarist Steve Clark’s death) that found its way onto my radar… and basically represented the English outfit’s last gasp of mainstream popularity before the musical landscape permanently shifted (my interest in the band never extended significantly beyond this album - though I eventually downloaded most of their earlier hits from iTunes - but to this day, its music evokes powerful memories of summer trips to California, middle school dances, reading comic books, and other nostalgia-tinged, Wonder Years-type BS). 

I suppose you’d still technically categorize Adrenalize as some sort of melodious hard rock-hair metal hybrid, but the songs are so aggressively harmonious and hook-heavy (borderline assaultive in their sonic catchiness), the production and power riffs polished to such an immaculate sheen of radio-friendly grandeur, the album is practically bursting at the seams with unfettered, out-and-out pop vitality. It’s the musical equivalent of amphetamine-laced Red Bull. Even one of the more generic rock offerings, such as the cringingly-titled Make Love Like a Man, is still blessed with an infectiously toe-tapping groove. Likewise, Personal Property is a bit of a frivolous throwaway (particularly with lyrics that range from the vaguely misogynistic (“She’s personal property / off limits, out of bounds, under lock and key / confidential, for my eyes only”) to the flat-out braindead (“You could be king of the jungle / or you could swing in the rain / but she don’t need no monkey, not my babe / because I’m her Tarzan and she’s my Jane”)) but is nonetheless powered by high-grade rock ’n roll propulsion fuel. It has an irresistible bounce to its step - I find it a very difficult track to skip.

The album’s biggest outlier is likely the seven-minute White Lightning - the band’s dedication to Clark’s memory. The track has a certain dark sense of drama and a relatively muscular chorus, but starts to feel a bit plodding when stretched to almost twice normal song length. Meanwhile, many regard the power ballad Tonight as a minor classic, but I have a somewhat ambivalent relationship with it. It comes so close to greatness, but just as the chorus starts to soar it pulls back for reasons I find endlessly frustrating. It’s almost worse than just sucking outright, even if it still technically earns a conditional thumbs up.

Let’s dig into the good stuff. Opening track Let’s Get Rocked sets the tone and establishes the mandate (it’s spelled out right there in the title - I mean, I didn't say it was an ambitious mandate). Yes, it has that certain vapid quality that tends to manifest itself in arena-sized rock anthems, in addition to a lot of obnoxiously cheeseball showmanship (when the barrage of classical violins kicks in and Joe Elliott sneers “Turn it off - that ain’t my scene”… oy)… but damn is it catchy, like a more complex We Will Rock You with actual layers of aural craftsmanship. And speaking of aural craftsmanship, it’s impossible to resist the sumptuously overblown production of steroidal power ballad Have You Ever Needed Someone So Bad… which is like the go-to anthem of middle school crushes and boy-girl birthday parties (I’d love to say it’s the definitive 8th grade slow-dance track of the early-90s, but this is still a universe where Don’t Cry and End of the Road exist). Nonetheless, don’t even *think* about presenting me with any sort of playlist of hair metal ballads (definitive or otherwise) if this song ain’t on it (or I Remember You by Skid Row - the rest is negotiable).    ​

The album’s pop influences flex the full force of their muscle on Heaven Is, a sugary pixie stick of a song with a majestically melodic chorus (“Heaven is a girl I know so well / She makes me feel good when I feel like Hell / Heaven is a girl that I’ve got to have / And she makes me feel better when I’m feeling bad”). Meanwhile, I Wanna Touch U (admittedly another atrocious title) is a pop-rock earworm of unbridled infectious fervor, guaranteed to tattoo itself across your neocortex. Both these tracks ruthlessly target the brain’s pleasure receptors with icepick-like efficiency - you might be able to maintain a lousy mood through one of them, but certainly not both.

My favorite song, however, has to be Stand Up (Kick Love Into Motion), an absolute banger of a ballad that's like the perfect fusion of the gloriously addictive power chords and tempo of Heaven Is and Have You Ever Needed Someone So Bad’s overripe, heart-on-the-sleeve bombast. Much like crystal meth, you won’t be able to shake that chorus once it gets its hooks into you. And last but certainly not least, Tear It Down is a perfect, full-throttle party anthem to close out the album in a headbanging frenzy. That rock ’n roll propulsion fuel that powered Personal Property? It’s twice as potent here, with an extra dash of nitro for good measure. Listen in the car at your own risk - you’re almost certain to have damaged the steering wheel by the time the song reaches its final, resounding howl of “ALL NIGHT” (as in “If only you could stay…”). All-in-all, a rather remarkable achievement, given that the band was without longtime producer Mutt Lange (architect of their previous three albums) and elected to go into the recording studio without a replacement for Clark (Phil Collen assuming both the rhythm and lead guitar duties). Honestly, Adrenalize is such a compulsive encapsulation of its era - and lives up to its title with such auditory aplomb - at some point we might need to have a serious inquest over whether grunge was guilty of crimes against humanity for bringing the decade's preening pop-rock party to such a premature and undeserved close.