Def Leppard - Adrenalize

Japanese-only SHM-CD (Super High Material CD) pressing of this classic 1992 album from the Rock legends. SHM-CDs can be played on any audio player and delivers unbelievably high-quality sound. You won't believe it's the same CD! Universal. 2008. Album Description

One of the Best Commercial Rock Albums Ever! But What a Disappointment!

This is after the brilliant "Hysteria" Def Leppard's second best album by far and no mean feat considering the drummer only had one arm by this time and Steve Clark had just died! Almost every track is brilliant and the hit single "Let's Get Rocked" is actually one of the weaker tracks too! It's frightening how much better it'll sound once they get around to remastering this thing.

Unfortunately, this is not one of those times. Given the very hefty price tag on this thing in order to justify upgrading from your existing copy, it has got to be a major improvement at least from the aesthetics of the cardboard sleeve and especially when it comes to sound quality. The cardboard sleeve is nothing to shout about given what is currently out there e.g. The Band, Hall & Oates etc that have been very well designed from thicker good quality cardboard which is so well assembled that you don't fear it coming apart when the glue wears out like it is here. In fact, when it comes to the mlps version of "The Band" the only way to describe it is as a brilliant work of art; you'll have to see it to know what I mean about someone having great pride in his work to come up with what I believe is still the very best mlps version of an album that is currently out there.

The inclusion of the inner jacket replica and an insert with all the lyrics in both English and Japanese also isn't enough to justify a ridiculously expensive upgrade. The biggest crime though is the SHM-CD sound quality which is really very poor. In fact, my existing old copy sounds even better! Listening to both, there is nothing to distinguish between the two except for the cardboard sleeve with the SHM-CD label on the front and the vastly different sound quality which is no better than the old copy. I'm disappointed to have waited so long and this is what they have come up with: poor mlps design and sound quality that is no improvement over my existing old copy. The only plus is that they have added two bonus tracks: "Miss You in a Heartbeat" and "She's Too Tough" which is a nice touch. I have placed SHM-CD orders for other albums that are due to reach me soon and I hope and pray that they are much, much better sounding versions than this one.

Given the very high price on this baby for a version that is no improvement over the unremastered old cd that you already have, this is a rip off and a major waste of money in these uncertain economic times.

Avoid with as wide a berth as possible! July 26, 2008

Steve would be proud!

I reluctantly bought this CD because I am a huge Steve Clark fan and it was done after his death. I figured it couldn't have been any good if Steve wasn't involved. I couldn't have been more wrong. First of all, the Leps dedicated the CD to Steve, along with the song White Lightning, and (best of all!), most of the tunes were co-written by Steve. The music is pure Hysteria Leppard with a couple of notable exceptions that sound as if they could have been done in their Pyromania days ("Tear It Down," especially). There are also a couple of stinkers, too ("Let's Get Rocked," anyone? But then again Steve didn't co-write that one!) Phil did a phenomenal job interpreting Steve's guitar parts...not necessarily the same, but still impressive. There will never be another Steve, and in my opinion, Steve's spirit lives on happily in this CD. June 28, 2008

The End is here...

When John Bonham died...Led Zep called it a day...when Steven Clark died Def Leppard should have.

This ablum is the Hysteria scrap heap (admittedly so by the band)...The band lost is chemistry (and all ability to write wicked riffs) when their most talented member, Clark, passed away. A true shame that one of the greatest bands ever continues to destroy their legacy because there is money to be made.

Save your cash and buy High N' Dry, Pyromania and Hysteria...3 incredibly great albums.

Joe Elliot said that after Hysteria (albeit much after) they could have released an album of Bee Farts and sold millions....Adrenalize has sold over 7 million copies...for an album so bad and so out of place in 1992, that speaks volumes for DL's enormous popularity in the late 1980's. June 17, 2008

The Big Mistake

I think this album was doomed to fail. You had a predecessor that could not be equalled yet the band was intent on matching it by essentially recording the same album over again. On top of that you had original guitarist Steve Clark slowing drinking himself to death which he finally accomplished in 1991. Mix that all up with the horrible state of hair metal in the early 90's and you have a problem. People forget that bands like Poison, Winger, etc were still putting out albums and getting good record sales until 1992.
So out of all of this comes Adrenalize, the big follow-up to Hysteria. When I first got it back in '92 I thought it was pretty good but a little cheesy. Well, the album has not aged well. Not at all. In my opinion the album really only has two strong songs, "Tonight" and "White Lightning". It has some songs that are good if you are in the right mood, "Tear it Down", "I Wanna Touch U", "Stand Up", etc. And then it has some pure hair metal cheese in "Let's Get Rocked", "Heaven Is", "Make Love Like a Man". In the last ten years I can honestly say I only listen to a handful of songs at a time on this record. I just can't take listening to the whole thing. A lot of people view "X" as the band's disaster but this album is worse. Sure it sold well in 1992 but it made Def Leppard a joke in the music business and sent them down a strange path where each subsequent album they released was a direct reaction towards the previous one like they were trying to solve the problem of why they weren't popular anymore. Well, this is the reason. Adrenalize was a big cheeseball and although they've produced quality music since then this will always be the dark spot in their career. May 2, 2008

Last hurrah for Hair Metal before grunge killed it off. Pretty impressive sales, but still the weakest of the Decade Trilogy.

ADRENALIZE, is, in many ways, not only the end of an era for Def Leppard, but for hair/pop metal as well. Between 1983, when PYROMANIA came out, and this album came out (in 1992), the band had endured tragedy and continual setbacks. Drummer Rick Allen lost an arm in a car accident, and had to learn how to play drums all over again. Steve Clarke drifted in and out of alcoholism, and went thru several rehab periods.

They tried recording the followup to HYSTERIA, but ultimately the project took forever to get off the ground due to Clarke's addiction problems. Eventually, Clarke had a six month leave of absence in 1990, and was found dead by his girlfriend in 1991. The band, rather than finding a replacement, decided to carry on as a quartet and finish the album. Not only that, their producer for PYROMANIA and HYSTERIA, Mutt Lange (Shaniah Twain's husband), jumped ship, producing Bryan Adam's rather dismal WAKING UP THE NEIGHBORS.

It helps to understand this history before you start listening to the album itself. In nearly a decade, Def Leppard only managed to produce three albums, mostly due to the aforementioned circumstances. And of these three albums, ADRENALIZE is easily the weakest.

For starts, the song writing has some issues. The best songs are those co-written with Steve Clarke, but without his talent, the whole album gets dragged down. It's not that the band really departs from their signature sound established on PYRO and HYSTERIA. All the bombastic hair metal that the 1980s junkies loved was here. Def Leppard crafed well polished hair metal that featured infectious melodies, panaromic scope, and an overall sense of contagious fun (something that was very lacking in 1992 in contemporary rock). Still, parts of the album fill stiff, and Phil Collens is simply no Steve Clark (Phil had to play the guitar parts set aside for Steve, as well as play his own parts by overdubbing). Also, some of the tracks are borderline ridiculous, especially the big single "Let's Get Rocked", which is a teenager telling his father he won't take out the trash or tidy his room, and imploring his friends "let's get the rock out of here." Lyrically puerile, and I confess it's rather hard to picture Joe Elliot, at the time over thirty, singing such adolescent lines. Just bad.

For a Def Leppard album, ADRENALIZE is rather ballad heavy. Still, "Tonight" is one of their best all time songs. "Have You Ever Needed Someone So Bad" sounds like a rewrite, if not musically then lyrically, of the Bad Company song "If You Needed Somebody", which came out in 1990 just before this came out, and contemporary with the ADRENALZIE album. If the Bad Company track had any influence, I'm not sure, but they're both unrequited love and extremely similar.

The record itself, when it came out, sounded totally out of place from what was being bought by the public and played on radio stations. Grunge had taken over by this point, and Def Leppard, like Van Halen, was one of the few bands that managed to see their way through this difficult time for hair/pop metal bands of their ilk. What worked for PYRO and HYSTERIA, by the time this record came out, feels anachronistic and rather out of place in 1992. But that leads us to the sales statistics for this record.

Given the music industry's environment at that time, an era dominated by grunge and the "Seattle sound", amazingly ADRENALIZE went to number one both in the UK and America for five weeks straight. This would be the last hair-metal album that would go triple platinum and really reach such a wide-spread audience. Perhaps due to the lack of output by the band (only two records in nine years), the purchasing public rewarded the band for their efforts by buying the album in droves. This really was the last adrenaline rush that Hair/Pop metal would see before it was killed off by grunge.

Sadly, ADRENALIZE, though financially successful, sounds like a pale imitation of the band's former glories, but the imitation was good enough to satisfy a lot of the fan base. The album does have some of Leppard's best songs (especially "Tonight"), but it's easily the most dispensable of the Decade Trilogy.
November 3, 2007

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