Def Leppard 'Hysteria': C/D?

I heard...or, rather, saw the video, for "Animal" recently, and it completely cemented my argument. Hysteria is poop (and no amount of re-mastering/re-tweaking will save it).

"Animal" is nowhere near the best song on Hysteria, you madman.

It's my favorite, but "Gods of War" (which, holy christ, after the remix sounds like Front 242) and "Rocket" nip at its heels.

"Animal" is nowhere near the best song on Hysteria, you madman.

That's akin to saying that it's not the stinkiest turd in the septic tank. POOP IS POOP.

No it isn't!

Yes it is!

http://www1.istockphoto.com/file_thumbview_approve/1721346/2/istockphoto_1721346_kids_fighting.jpg

REVIVE:

Vindifuckincation: In John Sellers' new memoir, Perfect From Now On: How Indie Rock Saved My Life, the scribe says....

I'd deemed Hysteria the most disappointing album of all time, and it still might be: next to Pyromania it is an overproduced, castrated, one-armed bore.

Fuckin' AMEN!

The songs are strong, but it's all too glossy and sterile-sounding. It's too bad, because Def Leppard had a really good sense of melody among the hair-metal bands.

"C'mon, Steve!"

martin popoff famously rated this 0 out of 10 in his much esteemed guide to heavy metal!!!

Who the fuck is John Sellers?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/7/74/JohnSellers-1961SICover.jpg/445px-JohnSellers-1961SICover.jpg
Gunter glieben glauchen globen!

I watched the Hysteria episode of Classic Albums last night and I've got even more respect for it now. The detail with which this thing was crafted is mindboggling. I never knew the cut up backwards vocal bits in "Rocket" were actually the choruses of "Gods of War" and "Love Bites".

Yeah, I need to watch that -- only just learned the whole series was on Netflix Instant, friend Stripey said it was a stellar episode.

There's a bit where Phil is talking about how Mutt brought the song "Love Bites" to the band as a country ballad he'd written, and proceeds to demonstrate the opening verse in that style. IT ALL CLICKS NOW. It really is a country song run through the Def Leppard machine.

yeah I really love that Classic Albums ep. the Love Bits cutups were a nice surprise.

BITES ragh

Happy 25th birthday! Released August 3, 1987.

Adrien wrote a great piece about it today:

http://social.entertainment.msn.com/music/blogs/headbang-blogpost.aspx?post=b9f0d5a5-25ec-4d1f-b9bc-c6e30e0ed424

Though it's not my favorite Def Leppard album, goddamn it's a a beauty.

There's not a bad song on it! Well, I mean 'Don't shoot shotgun' is kinda *shrug* but it's not horrible and all things considered it doesn't interrrupt the flow of the album at all. You can listen to this whole thing and rock out the whole time.

bless their poppy little hearts

I loved it at the time, but now I have to mentally separate it from what came before in order to appreciate it. I love, love, love High 'N' Dry (the best 80s AC/DC album they never made), and this has nothing from that band - even the singer has lost some power in the intervening years. As its own thing, however, it's a monumental beast.

Eh, even as a kid this one disappointed me. It's not all band, but it's SUCH a letdown after what came before.

"Pour Some Sugar On Me" has a great chorus. That's about all I can really say for it. They only got wimpier and more out of touch from here.

I read that the clean chords in "Hysteria" were recorded one note at a time, just layered brick by brick. What insane attention to detail on this album.

Probably mentioned already on this thread but well worth the viewing:

http://www.amazon.com/Classic-Albums-Def-Leppard-Hysteria/dp/B0000649L7

^^^ still my favorite episode

EZ otm - High N Dry is badass, Pyromania is killer too...Hysteria's nothing really close to those, but yeah, as its own album it's pretty great.

It's funny - I"m listening to "Don't Shoot Shotgun" at the moment and there are enough different sections, hooks and sounds to build a competent pop/rock album from it's disparate parts. And that's one of the songs most people consider filler! Truly is a crazy amount of work and detail in every song.

I lack the imagination to imagine a world without "Animal" in it.

That Classic Albums documentary of Hysteria might just be my favourite Classic Albums documentary of them all; the amount of effort put into the making of that album was beyond incredible, not to mention they come across as incredibly down-to-earth during the interviews.

i don't get the complaints about 'hysteria', it's a masterpiece. it made everything after look worse than it already was. though i mean adrenalize looked bad in any context i guess.

Oh god, Adrenalize is a terrible album. In my humble opinion, anyway!

adrenalize was probably the most disappointing album of my youth, it's like the ghostbusters 2 of pop metal.

adrenalize is worse than terrible. AWFUL

adrenalize was probably the most disappointing album of my youth, it's like the ghostbusters 2 of pop metal.
--omar little

booming post

adrenalize was probably the most disappointing album of my youth

appreciate this but wd remind the jury this is a board where people rep for the Smiths

There are some songs I like on Adrenalize, but I'm willing to admit they sound like Hysteria rejects.

MOW THE LAWN!
WALK THE DOG!
TAKE OUT THE TRASH!

Not that one! That song is criminally bad. (And its video is even worse.)

It strikes me as weird that this multi-platinum album that was almost inescapable in pop culture for over a calendar year now has sort of a cult following.

MOW THE LAWN!
WALK THE DOG!
TAKE OUT THE TRASH!

― set the controls for the heart of the sun (VegemiteGrrl), Saturday, August 4, 2012 4:30 AM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

LET'S GET THE ROCK OUTTA HERE!!!

...I suppose a rock's outta the question?

Please, no more ipecacs.

My brothers and I sang "Let's Get Rocked" as "Lesbian Rock" (including the obligatory "lesbo all the way"), so I don't think I ever paid much attention to whether the original song was as awesome as our version.

One of my brothers also thought "Pour Some Sugar On Me" was called "Awesome Shoot Hombre".

"Awesome shoot, hombre, in the name of love."

Hmm...could work.

there was that dumb commercial where the guy sings 'Pour Some Shook Up Ramen"

Okay this was fun to write:

http://thequietus.com/articles/09833-def-leppard-hysteria

:D

Love the idea of this album, but the non-single tracks are almost all dogs, which was a drag when I had it on cassette. Perfect disc for the MP3 era, however, when I can cull it down to its hits, which are so monolithically hit-like they totally make up for the dross.

Huge as this album was, lotta people forget that "Pyromania" was the second highest selling album of 1983 after "Thriller."

but the non-single tracks are almost all dogs

I'm willing to meet you half way on this, but then there's the fact that "Gods of War" might be the best track on the whole album and it wasn't a single.

More than the other also-rans, at least I can hum that one, but I guess the lyrics sink it for me.