If you don't believe in guns, they can't do anything to you.

Listening to Def Leppard's Hysteria for the first time in many years.  I'm enjoying it quite a bit but that only makes sense.  It's totally fuckin awesome the first rock album I ever wanted to get.  Pretty sure I hadn't heard anything from it but the album was popular in 6th or 7th grade so I did go along with the crowd.  Probably for a similar reason I had received Whitesnake's self-titled album the previous Christmas but I hadn't asked for it.  Appetite For Destruction would be the next album I got and that was for the same reason too.

Anyway, it does sound great and probably not just because it entered my life at a young age, this must have been the highest musical recording technology of the time and they sure spent a lot of money on it.  And time, looking it up, Def Leppard's previous album had come out in 1983, this came out in 1987 and the follow-up came out in 1992.  I'm not sure even old musicians went so long without a release at that point but who would even think of that for a young band with potential?  Axl Rose must have been taking notes.

I'm not sure how much potential Def Leppard ever had.  They were popular in Britain, coming out of the post-punk era, I don't know how much success they ever had on record or tour by this point.  The songs are basically decent pop music, the production is certainly at the top of the line.  Special effects are used very well in songs like "Rocket" and "Gods of War," Mutt Lange is credited as co-writer of every song.  To the extent they're understandable, the lyrics aren't bad, just simplistic but there are a few amusing rhymes or phrases here and there.

The songs are basically fun as well.  They're catchy.  Nothing brilliant but nothing wrong either.  This is clearly where music was going and it's obviously where I got into it.  I'm trying to decide if I'll follow it up with Appetite For Destruction since that's what I did mumble-mumble years ago.