Whatever the case you’re not missing anything if you choose to pass ‘Diamond Star Halos’ up, another forgettable entry in Def Leppard’s catalogue.
Written by: Dangerzone
ARTIST: Def Leppard
ALBUM: Diamond Star Halos
LABEL: UMC (Universal Music Catalog)
SERIAL: 3894511
YEAR: 2022
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: 
LINEUP: Joe Elliot – lead vocals * Phil Collen, Vivian Campbell – guitars, backing vocals * Rick Savage – bass, backing vocals * Rick Allen – drums
TRACK LISTING: 01 Take What You Want * 02 Kick * 03 Fire It Up * 04 This Guitar * 05 SOS Emergency * 06 Liquid Dust * 07 U Rok Mi * 08 Goodbye For Good This Time * 09 All We Need * 10 Open Your Eyes * 11 Gimme A Kiss * 12 Angels (Can’t Help You Now) * 13 Lifeless * 14 Unbreakable * 15 From Here To Eternity
RATING: 
WEBLINKS: Site Link
Background
Is there anyone who still gets excited at the prospect of a new Def Leppard album? You can count me out. I wasn’t even aware of this album until a month after its release when it showed up as a suggestion on Spotify. This platter comes seven years after their long forgotten self-titled effort in 2015, the band still taking an eternity to release new music.
That’s old news at this stage, just like the 80’s where they amassed their success. After all the band hasn’t really released anything of worth in more than two decades, still relying on their stale classics apparently. Like their last effort there’s 15 songs to digest and I dare anyone to try and consume them all in one sitting.
The Songs
Musically the band alternates between their vintage sound and more modern musings, the inevitable mixture a staple on their albums. ‘Fire It Up’ is an obvious nod to the ‘Hysteria’ days, much like the opening pair of ‘Take What You Want’ and ‘Kick.’ The nauseating ballad ‘This Guitar’ features guest vocals from Alison Krauss, the band trying to copy Robert Plant it seems.
Collen throws up two consecutive duds in the form of ‘Liquid Dust’ and the appallingly titled ‘U Rok Mi’ and it’s horrific to consider there’s still another nine songs left. The orchestral ballad ‘Goodbye For Good This Time’ explores some type of Beatles fetish, while the lightweight rocker ‘All We Need’ is as uninspiring as its title.
Predictably Def Leppard revert back to the 80’s on ‘Gimme A Kiss’ as the insipid blending of styles continues. Yet another ballad appears with ‘Angels (Can’t Help You Now)’ and I can’t help but wonder who this appeals to in 2022. ‘Lifeless’ is another dull collaboration with Krauss and an apt summary of this album. Sadly ‘From Here To Eternity’ isn’t a cover of the Iron Maiden classic, but yet another dreary mid-tempo cut with zero energy or heaviness. That in fact sums up Def Leppard this century so far.
In Summary
Did this album really happen or is it a figment of my imagination? Like most latter-day Def Leppard efforts it’s come and gone in the blink of an eye, bombing commercially as the band took their place on a recent stadium tour with fellow veterans Motley Crue, Poison and Joan Jett. The band played three tracks from this album nightly, which I suspect were treated with derision by aging punters eager to hear ‘Love Bites’ for the 8000th time. Whatever the case you’re not missing anything if you choose to pass ‘Diamond Star Halos’ up, another forgettable entry in Def Leppard’s catalogue.
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Kick
Take What You Want (Live Jimmy Kimmel)
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Probably 15 tracks too many in my estimation. Just quite why a studio album follows after 7 years of raiding their back catalogue of live material seems like an exercise in futility. Much like Bon Jovi, Lepp became less interesting after their fourth album.
[Smokey] Man, you’ve got to review the new(ish) Wolfsbane album that was released a couple months back. Talk about appalling crap that came and went without so much as a single album review (far as I can make out). I only realized the band had even made it when I scanned a Wikipedia list of rock/metal albums for 2022 a couple weeks back. The album made me sick, man. The band attempt to recapture their zany energy and antics of the early 90’s, with Blaze failing abysmally as he pretends his 25 years of dour power metal never happened. It doesn’t help matters that visually he’s now a 60 year old dude with bald head and sumo gut. The party metal schtick just don’t work when you look like that and are singing songs with titles like ‘Running Wild’ and ‘Rock City Nights’.
I mentioned this to Alun a few months ago, not a high priority for review I’d say.
[Smokey] Probably not, George. I only mentioned Wolfsbane as reading this review reminded me of how I found out that they’d released a new album, the similarity. I was actually pretty excited when I found out that they had, I went straight to YouTube and gave it a listen. But the good vibe didn’t last too long, by four songs in I was bored by the band’s attempt to recapture their sound and energy from 1991 and started fast forwarding tracks just to get the album over with. Blaze as wild man hard rocker just don’t cut it 2022, not when you know what his day job’s been since 1995.
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October 9 199.123.78.122
I did hear the Wolfsbane album after George mentioned it to me and it’s a wretched, appalling album. Like Smokey says there’s an attempt to recapture the spirit of the bands early days, but it’s stale and boring beyond belief. In fact because I listened to it on Spotify the songs still show up on random playlists, making me mentally and physically ill each time they appear. The summary from Smokey sums it up. Blaze has been on this trail of self-doubt and seriousness for what seems like 30 years and now he’s attempting to relive his youth and become the wild man of 1989.
[Smokey] Yeah, it’s an odd one, man. In theory Blaze as grebo hard rocker doing his wild man thing is exactly what I want from him. God knows I’ve gone on enough about it over the years, how I feel that’s his natural role as a frontman. So listening to this album and hearing him go at it like he was the nutter on Massive Noise Injection, the nutter who told a crowd during ‘Temple Of Rock’ to beat up a geek who wasn’t getting down hard enough, that should be a cause for celebration. And I did think like that for the first two tracks or so, was all ‘yeah, Blaze is back, man!’ But at some point reality kicked in and I couldn’t get the image of Blaze as earnest power metaller out of my head. That was it then, the spell was broken. Yeah, you can say that no man is just one thing, has other sides to his character. It’s just where’s he been hiding El Loco for 30 years, I haven’t seen or heard any evidence of it. So it’s hard to take overall, it comes across as a marketing move to sell an album rather than a natural state of being. It’s the same with a turkey like Dave Mustaine. Too many years have gone by with him chasing the buck for me to take his latest attempt at hard boiled thrash seriously. After all this was the dude who went corporate in 94, selling us sentimental tripe like ‘A Tout Le Monde’. The guy was about 33 years old, in the prime of his life, you’d have thought the fire would still be burning to expand on the extreme metal of four years earlier, especially with all the sonic developments during that era. Yet the dude sold his soul with lame melodic metal that was designed for maximum radio exposure. It was inexcusable, one of the worst cop outs in metal history. Mustaine, Blaze, dozens like them, they’re all just worn out brands in 2022, attempting to capitalize on a point in history when they were the big kahuna of their respective scenes. But their natural lifespan with regards to energy, inspiration and creativity ended years ago. It’s just product now, trash made for no discernible reason at all.
[Candyman] X is where i gave up on Def Leppard. Never to be forgiven after that.