While many of their peers were abandoning ’70s metal and arena rock to hop the punk/new wave bandwagon, Def Leppard smartly stripped the earlier era’s music of its excesses, bolstered it with energetic, pop-savvy hooks and quickly found itself the vanguard of the UK’s new metal revival and one of the ’80s most spectacularly successful rock acts. The first disc of this 35-track, two-and-a-half hour double-disc retrospective focuses on the familiar hits of their early MTV, platinu [Read More...]
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I used to have one of Def Leppard’s older Greatest Hits Packages (Vault). This is one of those bands that as a child of the 80’s, I knew very well. Def Leppard in the 80’s were a band that you simply could not ignore. I knew all their hits, I had a few of their tapes back in the day, but as time went on, they felt like a band I had “outgrown”. They tried to change their style in 1996 (Slang), but then changed back to their more traditional sound after that, but I wasn’t terribly interested anymore (although I did like a track here and there).
When they came out with this 2 CD Greatest Hits package, I ditched all my existing Def Leppard CD’s and went with this, as I felt it comprised all the songs of theirs I really liked. There’s no point in listing them here, I’d just be copying the tracklisting. But it’s almost all enjoyable. It has a bunch of songs from their earliest days before they got their mega success, which is when a lot of people thought the band lost it’s soul. This covers everything up until their most recent studio album as of now, that being “X”.
If you ever liked Def Leppard in the past, and don’t have any of their albums, get this. It’s a great career covering retrospective that hits just about all the corners of their albums.
1) It’s the best compilation that offers 35 of the band’s tracks.
Because this covers their career (though mostly 80-92 like I mentioned) it shows how the band can change their sound but still sound great.
2) It gives you an excellent look at their most successful years (1980-1992.)
3) Having “Rock of Ages” will save you the trouble of getting three of their albums “High ‘n’ Dry” “Pyromania” and “Hysteria” due to the fact that most of the tracks from those albums are here.
4) This compilation is less expensive and better than the two, separate greatest-hits packages from the band.
5) While it consists a very good deal of the albums I mentioned above, it also gives you a good sample of songs from their other albums such as “On Through The Night”, “Retro Active” and “Euphoria”.
6) It’s less expensive than getting both of the other greatest-hits packages.
7) The inside booklet features comments from the band members on each song, plus cool photos and a brief overview of their career.
9) The two CDs are packaged in the same case so you don’t have to spend extra money as if it was a box set.
10) Def Leppard Rocks!
Overall:
This is a very well put-together compilation of a great rock band. I strongly recommend getting it, it’ll be hard to stop listening to it and you’ll instantly love it.