Yeah!

Def Leppard were never the same after Steve Clark's untimely death in 1991, and every release of theirs since reflects this. Every album post-Hysteria sounds like it's missing something, that magic of the first four albums. They've tried branching out and trying something different and they've tried recapturing that old sound of fun hair metal but they always come up short. Then, in 2006, they released this: a covers album of all things. This album is pure fun, no left-turns into serious territory of any kind. After several attempts at staying relevant and recapturing old glory they decided to just have fun with some old favorites from their youth, their sources ranging from the usual suspects like Thin Lizzy and T. Rex to odder choices like Blondie and ELO.

Unsurprisingly the band's most comfortable on the glam rock songs like "20th Century Boy" and "Golden Age of Rock 'n' Roll". These songs obviously influenced the band's sound heavily, so they sound very natural here. It's the experiments that draw the most attention I think. The original David Essex "Rock On" was a weird, quieter song, so the band decided to electrify it and it's worked well for them since (they still play it live). Other experiments fare worse, like their cover of "10538 Overture", which never sounds right to me, being a fan of ELO myself. A surprising joy is their rendition of The Kinks' "Waterloo Sunset", which sounds like the late-90's or early 2000's to me.

In some ways this is the band's best album since the Retro Active compilation. This is a band that isn't trying to prove to the world that they can be alternative or Spears-esque pop music, nor are they trying in vain to relive the halcyon days of the 80's. All this band wants to do is play the music of their childhood and have some fun. If this sentiment resonated with the music critics of the world, then it would be more appreciated. As it is now, it'll be enjoyed mildly by those with few expectations, other than a good time.

Many bands have done albums that consist of only covers of songs from the bands that inspired them as a way of paying tribute to them. Queensryche had done it with "Take Cover", and Hammerfall had done it as well with "Masterpieces". Of course, all of us are aware of the existence of "Garage Inc." by Metallica. These albums were never the best in any of the aforementioned bands' careers, mainly cos the original versions of the songs are mainly preferred over the covers. In the case of Def Leppard, with their album simply entitled "Yeah!", the covers not only don't hold a candle to the originals, but sound WAY worse than Metallica's version of Bob Seger's "Turn the Page".

Sure, most of the bands that Def Leppard covered usually don't appear on headbangers' playlists, but since they inspired them, they HAD to make the songs from those bands their own. Oh, yes, they sure did make them their own, which is what makes "Yeah!" so horrible. "Rock On" is a pathetic excuse for a song to begin with, but Def Leppard gives us something even worse. Guys, the song is entitled "Rock On", so we could expect a little "rock" in it, right? Oh, there is a little bit of rock in it, but it's at the very end. The song is basically Rick Savage's bass guitar made to sound like an old Atari console, a drum machine, and Joe Elliot. Doesn't sound anything remotely resembling "rock" now does it? That's the kind of sound that Def Leppard had become, folks, a bunch of washed-up rock stars trying to appease Rolling Stone magazine by making music that they'd think teenyboppers would squeal over.

There are songs on here that were originally good, but suffer due to the fact that Def Leppard covered them. That means that they try to make them more marketable for the 2000's, a decade of truly nasty stuff. Free fans would be horrified by Def Leppard's rendition of "Little Bit of Love", for the production was of course, glossy. As a result of that, the song lost its nostalgic 70's hard rock sound and was turned into a Top 40-sounding, over-polished pile of cow manure. The piano and the graceful backing vocals that were present in the original? You won't find any of that here! Just some shallow guitars that scream in some parts and Joe Elliot trying to sound suave. That was not what "Little Bit of Love" was meant to be, people. Yeah, I get it, it's an old song, but it should remain that way, cos if it tries to sound trendy for kids that worship Kanye West, it would be just awful.

Don't expect the idiots that gave us "Euphoria" or "Slang" to do justice with covers of much better (or worse) songs. You could lose WAY less brain cells by smacking your head against a brick wall. "Yeah!" is not a love letter to Def Leppard's playlist so much as it is a Dear John letter, for songs that are considered classics are butchered and made into a rotten pot roast that no one should ever taste. What can you expect to come out of Def Leppard anyway? They're the Metallica of British music. At least Metallica tried to rediscover their roots after "St. Anger", but I don't need to elaborate on how Def Leppard lost its way and became something else. That would be redundant. In short, "Yeah!" is an album full of classics that you would absolutely hate if you listened to it.

Playing a set of covers that all but completely copies the exact style of the band’s who wrote the songs is something that is expected out of a band that makes a living playing small clubs and bars or is the starting point for a band looking to get their name out. However, it’s not the sort of thing that lends itself to extended enjoyment through repeated plays in your stereo system, and it’s definitely not something that a well established band that’s been in existence for the better part of 30 years should be passing off as a studio album. And this is exactly what Def Leppard did here, essentially reliving the early 70s at it’s most obsolete blandness, throwing in a few occasional token songs from the 60s and later 70s to remind us that they’ve not living in just one isolated quadrant of hard rock’s past.

I can understand Yngwie Malmsteen putting out a collection of covers and adapting them to his style, coming out with something that sounds very different than what was originally put out by bands like Kansas, Rainbow, Jimi Hendrix and Deep Purple. Naturally with the selection that Def Leppard went with here there wasn’t a whole lot to do aside from updating the recording sound to fit something closer to what’s been going on of late, but given that most rock bands today are also living in the past this likely isn’t an option for something that is expected to go multi-platinum, ingenuity and creativity be damned.

There are occasional instances where this is augmented a little bit by a tinge of artistic liberty, but mostly in ways that are to the detriment of the song. They threw in a few fancy feedback effects and a video game sounding drum track to make “Rock On” sound even more processed and lame than the original version, which is quite an accomplishment. They completely butcher the vocal sound of the ELO song, turning it into what sounds like a really goofy knockoff of a Beach Boys cover. “Drive-In Saturday”, which is one of my least favorite David Bowie ballads, is poorly produced and made even duller by a completely unemotional performance out of Joe Elliot, whose all but on the verge of coughing up a lung given how shot his voice is.

The bright spots on here are few and far between, as many of these alleged classic songs aren’t very good and haven’t been updated at all. The remake of “Waterloo Sunset”, one of the lesser appreciated yet better songs by The Kinks stands out in that the arrangement is exploited a little more and we get a glimpse of the same Def Leppard who put together “Pyromania” and “High And Dry” adding a few good twists to things. The Thin Lizzy cover is really good in the sense that their songs basically play themselves and kick ass by virtue of the band’s knack for writing riffs with punch, and the band does little to change the song. “Stay With Me” is the vocal highlight of the album because Joe Elliot’s aging voice is given a rest and Phil Collin takes the helm, resulting in something that doesn’t sound like a bunch of old guys playing covers of even older guys’ songs. For 1972 this was a pretty hard rocking song, and the band has made the right decision not to mess with perfection, although if Vivian Campbell keeps up with this slide guitar stuff he may have to change his name to Bonnie Raitt.

The fact that this was considered a landmark rock album of 2006 is a testament not so much to the decline of Def Leppard, but the decline of rock journalism and the musical genre itself. Considering all of the underground rock groups putting out entire albums of original stuff that might actually be attempting to expand the genre, it insults the intelligence of any person spending money on CDs to assume that this album was so lauded for any other reason than that it has Def Leppard’s name on it. If you haven’t bought this cash grabbing beer coaster of a CD yet, save yourself the frustration and try something less painful like getting a nose job without the anesthesia.

Originally submitted to (www.metal-observer.com) on November 29, 2008.