Reviews
USA Today had this review:
Def Leppard, Euphoria ( out of four): After a brave but overwrought attempt to come off fashionably dour on 1996's Slang, the Leps have wisely returned to their roots. Which means irresistible pop-metal trash confections based on monstrous riffs, topped with squealing, flashy guitar breaks and sweetened by huge stacked-harmonies-and-hand-clap choruses. Producer/writer/Svengali Mutt Lange is back to co-write three tracks, which is only fair, considering he swiped all of their niftiest tricks for wife Shania's country hits, confounding the multitudes who considered Def Leppard and Nashville a twain that never would meet. Lange's touch is most apparent on first single Promises, which builds on a riff borrowed from a quarter-century-old Todd Rundgren classic, Couldn't I Just Tell You, to concoct a chunk of delectable radio candy. But the band is equally impressive on its own, notably on the crisp, processed opener, Demolition Man; the restrained, affecting power ballad To Be Alive; the bleak rocker Paper Sun; and, best of all, Back in Your Face, a blatant homage to - of all people - '70s glam rocker Gary Glitter that serves as a metaphor for the Leps' new/old approach: Having the Leps back in your face makes facing the music a euphoric experience.
Entertainment Weekly had this review:
Def Leppard Euphoria (Mercury): The alterna-crowd can snicker all it wants, but here's the cold, hard truth: Def Leppard are back in a big, bad Hysteria-sleek way. Probably the last thing fans expected after the recent, awkward Slang experiment. But longtime producer Mutt Lange is onboard this time as cowriter, and the hooks - ringing like a carillon on "Demolition Man" and "Back in Your Face" - call the lapsed faithful back to worship. B+
And Greg Kot wrote up a sad review in Rolling Stone: ** (two stars out of 4)
Def Leppard
Euphoria
Mercury
Eighties pop rockers fall down on lumbering comeback
"Demolition Man," the opening track on Euphoria, Def Leppard's seventh studio album, plays like a typical installment of VH1's rock-bio series Behind the Music: Let me loose, I just got back/I was pushed and I got dragged/I tasted mud, I tasted wine/Kissed the life I left behind." The moral of the tale: Every multimillion-selling hack gets a second chance. These blue-collar Brits have always been motivated by sales rather than art, so it's little wonder that they've abandoned the more introspective tone struck on Slang (1996), a commercial flop, to return to their Eighties metal-for-the-malls formula: hooks big enough to beach Moby Dick, lean arrangements that owe more to Thin Lizzy than to Black Sabbath and germ-free production that emphasizes high-end sheen over low-end sludge. Old crony Mutt Lange takes time out from shepherding the career of his wife, Shania Twain, to lend a heavy hand on a couple of would-be hits, including "Promises," which resurrects the "Pour Some Sugar on Me" buzz. Yet the defining characteristic of Euphoria is its bloodlessness, from the robotic drum tracks to the disconcertingly inhuman tone of those trademark massed vocal choruses. Behind the Music notwithstanding, the flesh-and-blood Def Leppard apparently never made it out of the Eighties alive.
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