Vault: Greatest Hits 1980-1995 - Def Leppard (CD 1995)

The 1980s are a time that many rock fans would prefer to forget. A lot of limp and weak hair metal pervaded the time and much of that is forgettable. However, some genuinely good rock music did emerge from that era. One of those bands that managed to produce some good rock music is the hard rock quintet from Sheffield Great Britain known as Def Leppard.

Def Leppard always stood out from the pack in that their music was generally more involving than many of their contemporaries. Many of the hair bands such as Winger produced party music that sounded fun while it was on the stereo, yet was so brittle and lacking in substance that it left nothing once it ended. While most of Def Leppard's songs did not venture far beyond the get-down and party themes of the era, the music was far better played than that of many of their hair-metal peers. Unlike many Led Zeppelin influenced rock bands that came along in the 1980s and copied Led Zeppelin's sound minus what made it sounds so good and in the process created lame, watered-down imitations of the masters, Def Leppard remembered that music needs to contain some real emotion and substance in order to work as something other than background noise.

So that was why when Def Leppard released this greatest hits collection known as Vault back in 1996 that I had to pick it up. Def Leppard made some good albums in the 80s and early 90s, yet their main forte was as a singles band and so this collection seemed to serve as a good retrospective.

Vault contains 15 tracks and spans the groups 80s and 90s output up until the 1993 rarities collection known as "Retroactive". The collection skips the bands 1980 debut album "On Through The Night" and selects one track from 1981's "High And Dry" (The Led Zeppelinish "Bringing On The Heartbreak") before diving into the hits from 1983's breakthrough album "Pyromania". Once those begin, there's no stopping them. For the rest of the album, we are treated to hits from the "Hysteria" (1988), "Adrenalize" (1992) and "Retroactive" albums as well as a few soundtrack cuts and one obligatory new track.

Some parts of the album sound somewhat dated (The "Fight For Your Right to Party" style anthem "Let's Get Rocked") and there is perhaps a little bit too much of an emphasis on early 90s material, namely a few overrated power ballads ("Miss You In A Heartbeat", "Two Steps Behind"). The aforementioned new track "When Love And Hate Collide" is simply filler and best skipped over. Yet even the dated songs are still fun and the ballads hold up a lot better than the junk peddled by Warrant and Winger.

Overall however, Vault is loaded with the pure rock energy that made Leppard sound so good in their time. Examples include the goofy fun "Pour Some Sugar On Me" (Recently brought back to life in a cell phone commercial), the hard rock party anthems "Rock Of Ages" (Later sampled to death by The Offspring) and "Armageddon It", the heart felt ballad "Love Bites", the emotionally driven part rocker/part ballad "Foolin'", the sexually-charged "Photograph" which stands up as well as some of Van Halen's prime material from this era and the classic rock name-checker "Rocket" (although the title is sung like "Rock It!").

Are Def Leppard a band on the level of Zeppelin or even Guns N Roses or AC/DC? No. But they actually gave us some good rock music with substance and feeling in an era where commercial junk was the norm. If you're looking for some 80s rock without the hairspray, pick up Vault.