Iowa City, IA - Media Reviews

Def Leppard @ Carver-Hawkeye Arena By Daily Iowan

Time was, heavy metal meant something: slack jawed morons with vegetables in their leather pants, Satan worship, ritual sacrifice, wholesale violence, epic 'compositions' about druids or space travel.

The perfect soundtrack to hormone-enraged adolescence.

But in these late '80s, heavy metal's gone upscale.

Led by bands like Def Leppard and Bon Jovi, heavy metal lite has become a slickly packaged mixture of youthful aggression and formulaic songwriting designed solely to be crammed into the waiting, yawning cake-holes of the MTV generation.

At Carver-Hawkeye Arena Tuesday night, before some 16,000 freshly-scrubbed members of that generation, Def Leppard delivered a technically astounding musically proficient, professionally paced two hours of sixth or seventh generation hard rock.

Lost somewhere in the gee-whiz hi-tech glitz that is modern concert wizardry, though, was the fact that Def Leppard is a mind-numbingly dull band.

Drawing mostly from their two most recent records, Def Leppard gave the crowd exactly what most had come to see - near note perfect renditions of hooky, anthemic songs delivered with swaggering, posing bravado at disabling volume.

Def Leppard took no chances Tuesday night.

But why should they?.

Playing to a crowd willing to wildly cheer even the most cliched heavy metal posturings.

The interminable 'see which section of the crowd can yell the loudest' section during 'Rock Of Ages' doesn't exactly encourage a daring musical high wire act.

By Daily Iowan 1988.

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