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Tuesday, 12th August 2003
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Toronto, ON - Media Reviews

Candied metal for masses By Ben Rayner

Def Leppard were far from the worst offenders when it came to the 1980s' many crimes against metal.

If one could ever call what Def Leppard does "metal," that is. Haircuts, flashy guitar solos and nifty band logo aside, "the Lep" has always been a little too polished and pretty-boy to really deserve the heavy-metal mantle.

Since the band began spewing its candied major-chord stadium shouters in Sheffield more than 25 years ago, its high-tech production, harmonious histrionics and Gary Glitter choruses have marked it as a less (consciously) gay Queen than as a true cousin to harder-rocking British contemporaries like Judas Priest and Iron Maiden.

Mariah Carey covered "Bringin' On The Heartbreak" when she was in town last week; need we say more?

Still, points for consistency. Holding triumphant court before roughly 10,000 loyal fans - an aging crew fond of cellphone pouches, denim shirts and gratuitous breast implants — at the Molson Amphitheatre last night, Def Leppard in 2003 sounded remarkably similar to Def Leppard in 1983, when Pyromania first sent the band rocketing to the top of the charts alongside Michael Jackson's Thriller.

This is noble, since songs about the act of "rockin'" - two off the top of the set, including the poetic statement of purpose "Rock! Rock! (Till You Drop)" and lyrics where the word "woman" is uttered in close proximity to the phrase "You know what I want" were hopelessly gauche when Def Leppard was lining its bank account with them 20 years ago.

And aside from the drudgerous "Now" a programmatic electro-rock dud from last year's X album that recalled an even wussier Linkin Park fronted by Steve Perry — there were no awkward grasps at present-day relevancy in the set, only hits, hits, hits broken up by the occasional new number that slotted comfortably, if unremarkably, in with the whole.

Whether your personal tastes lead you in that direction or not, the durability of the band's dumb-as-nails pop hooks is such that, eight bars into even such lesser catalogue entries as "Make Love Like A Man" and "Women" ("Skin on skin / Let the love begin / Womaaaaaaan!") every single note comes roaring back from memory.

Hits from the group's Pyromania and Hysteria-era heyday "Photograph," "Foolin'," "Hysteria," "Animal," "Rocket" thus might as well be branded into the brains of anyone who listened to the radio or paid attention to early MuchMusic and MTV during the 1980s, and were received enthusiastically by the crowd in kind.

The fact that every single song in the Def Leppard catalogue seems to have been written expressly for leading the masses at Wembley Stadium in singalong doesn't diminish their appeal, either.

It's hard to imagine Def Leppard in a venue any smaller than the Amphitheatre, in fact.

Every note on stage, from Joe Elliott's heavily reverbed howl to Phil Collen and Vivian Campbell's duelling guitars to Rick Allen's drumkit — which relied rather heavily on electronics long before he lost his arm to an accident in 1984 — comes filtered through an army of effects to sound as enormous as possible.

A thin acoustic version of "Two Steps Behind" exposing the exceedingly plain and simple tune at the centre only reinforced that this is one band that probably needs the cloak of a roaring crowd and a stadium PA to do its thing.

Against odds and changing fortunes, though, it's still got them, so no one seems to mind.

By Ben Rayner @ The Toronto Star 2003.

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