On Through the Night - Def Leppard (CD 1988)

Once upon a time, Def Leppard was one of those "New Wave of British Heavy Metal" bands. The group became exceptionally pop oriented sometime after the excellent Pyromania. In 1980, the band's first album -- On Through the Night -- was released and it gained a bit of attention. The members of Def Leppard have stated, time and time again, that they hate this disc, but it's not a bad album at all. It's packed with a lot of flashy guitar work, simplistic lyrics and manic energy. It's not great, but not bad as far as heavy metal albums go.

One thing needs to be cleared up immediately -- some reviewers have declared this to be a disc full of working class, bar band anthems that avoids the gothic and fantastic. For the most part, that's true. However, one track on here sounds like it comes from the same New Wave of British Heavy Metal movement that launched acts like Iron Maiden and Judas Priest to fame. "Overture," the final track on the disc, is right in line with those gothic and fantastic themes that other metal bands were writing at the time.

That one starts out at a slow, acoustic-guitar driven crawl with a riff that would have been home on an early Rush album (it sounds like Def Leppard might have borrowed a bit from Boston's "More than a Feeling," too). It then launches into a middle section that is reminiscent of some of Iron Maiden's more epic works. And the lyrics are nothing but gothic and fantastic -- a Dungeons & Dragons inspired tale about good conquering evil, swords, shields and all that type of mythic stuff.

But, that track does sound a bit out of place among the rest of the good time tracks that make up this disc. We start off with the riff-happy "Rock Brigade" (Def Leppard just loved to put the word "rock" in as many song titles as they could, it seems), a track that celebrates the power and glory of rock n' roll (of course!) The song tales the amusing tale of a bunch of hard rockin' fiends who wander around the countryside converting the masses with their powerful music (and stealing a sister or two, while they're at it). Hey, Def Leppard will never go down as one of the more intelligent bands on the planet, but at least they could play the hell out of their instruments and seemed to have a great time while doing it.

Another fun one is "Hello America," another riff heavy track on which the band is heading to America to rock (of course!) and chase girls. Indeed, Def Leppard wanted to make the trip all the way to my country so they could "boogie all over town" and engage in assorted shenanigans. Fair enough.

The most blistering track on the disc is "Wasted," a song that is musically strong but has downright awful and stereotypical lyrics. The riffs and uptempo guitar shredding is all there and it's impressive. Ah, but the lyrics. Yuck! It's another one of those "look at me, I'm wasting my life away on booze and pills (boo, hoo!)" things. The only thing worse than listening to a band brag about drug use is listening to one that wallows in self pity while singing about drug use. Shut up and go get clean if you feel that bad about how your life has turned out, you jerks.

This is an entertaining batch of tracks for the most part, in spite of a couple of songs that are just horrible ("Sorrow is a Woman" is a particularly rotten one, what with it's inappropriate power ballad atmosphere and all). It's not the finest Def Leppard disc out there, but it's not a bad start. Yes, it's pretty mindless, but the musicianship is impressive and it is a lot of fun on the whole.

Here's a track listing:

1. Rock Brigade
2. Hello America
3. Sorrow Is A Woman
4. It Could Be You
5. Satellite
6. When The Walls Came Tumbling Down
7. Wasted
8. Rocks Off
9. It Don't Matter
10. Answer To The Master
11. Overture